Ambience: Platoon (Moebius Four)
by Hieda no Akyuu
Summary: Dedicated to nobody, because nobody's going to know how much I'm going to hate writing this thing.
1. January 3rd, 2014

**Adding a fifth story to my repertoire probably isn't a good idea. But this idea has been sitting on my mind for quite some time, so I shall lay the context...**

**This semester I've been taking a cross-cultural class required by my university as a prerequisite to being able to study abroad (in my case, Japan for next semester at the time of this chapter's writing). This class has gotten me quite interested in the idea of what would happen if someone who grew up with American norms went over to Japan to command a fleet of ship girls. So here I am - though the end product probably won't be as simple as some American dude screwing around in a military base full of hot/cute/sexy girls who can stand on water and fire massive guns from their backs.**

**A few things to note: the format this story will be written in will be very strange - a first-person journal format. This is the same format with which I wrote one of my other stories, but I think it'll be interesting (plus, the reviews for that other story were overall pretty positive - ****_most _****of them, anyway, so I guess I did _something _right). In addition, these entries are meant to be quick and short - partly because I don't know how frequently I'll end up actually updating this story with all the other stories I've got to write for.**

**Enjoy.**

**-Hieda no Akyuu**

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><p><strong>January 3rd, 2014.<strong>

Standing on the bridge in the dark and I'm seeing my breath,

Trying to make it home without freezing to death...

I should've brought a jacket,

blowin' in my hands like it's really gonna stop the chill...

The lyrics are still fresh on my mind. It certainly becomes even more vivid knowing that I was standing out in the cold watching my breath materialize in front of me as I was standing out in the pier...even still. I suppose listening to music the entire way from the San Jose Fuel Depot was a bad idea...

...but I've been sent away from home. Thousands of miles away from home, with no return ticket back dated for at least a couple years.

And the worst part is, it doesn't even feel like home.

Not that home really felt like "home" to begin with.

I know, surprising, isn't it. On the other side of the world, out of a society that I'm used to and dropped like a bad habit into another where I have no idea who to be, how to act, know what to do. You'd be surprised just how the worst part of everything's so blatantly obvious, yet you don't realize just how obvious it is until you get there. If that makes any sense.

Wouldn't Colonel Kevinson and Lieutenant Colonel Kevinson like to see this...or, should I say, Mom and Dad.

Oh, sorry, military protocol and regulations, right? _Colonel._ Fucking _Colonel. _If I were a higher rank, I'd decommission myself.

I spent most of today touring and organizing the new base. I didn't expect for there to be such a large naval base here in Okinawa...it didn't look that big on the map. Why the fuck would they give a base the size of a small college to just me a handful of other naval personnel? Fucking shit, dude. I don't get it. It's only me here for now...got dropped off by one of the Hueys that the Japanese have, and now for a full day I get to sit here twiddling my goddamn thumbs doing nothing all day except stare at the bare walls of my new office and write this fucking journal.

Well, that's not entirely accurate. I have a good idea of how this base's laid out now, and after unpacking my shit in my room and tidying up the office, I had to clean the place up. It's still somehow got that new building smell, kinda like the new car smell that you have in new cars, duh, but it's like...it's like they built it, and then they just left it empty for years. Fucking cobwebs, dust layers thicker than a fingernail, other disgusting shit. Like, seriously, you're expecting this to be a military base when clearly there've been absolutely no fucking maintenance done in this place for a long time. Least I can say is that I'm disappointed. Not angry that I had to clean this place up myself, I'm used to cleaning up after other people's shit, trust me, but just disappointed that no one else even gave this place any consideration at all or just neglected this place entirely.

Military command...it's as big of a joke as George McClellan during the American Civil War. Well-intentioned, but retarded and sticking their heads three feet up their own asses. Corrupt, too...but at least McClellan wasn't corrupt.

Right?

Well, not that it matters, he was a fuckhead anyway...someone like him shouldn't be in charge of a military force. Part of the job being a commissioned officer's to know that you're supposed to tell your men to go die. And no matter how people say it, you can't ever sugarcoat that. You just can't. That's what officers do. That part of war will never fucking change. ever.

I don't need to play Call of Duty to know that war never changes - only the people in power.

Where am I going with this.

I know it's January, but it's still fucking cold. I found myself constantly checking my fingers and feeling my toes to make sure I'm not getting frostbite, even though it's not physically possible, since it's Okinawa. But just as deserts can feel like the inside of a damn refrigerator, so can Okinawa in the first week of January. Worst of all, there's no freaking heater system, only an air conditioning system. So imagine me sitting at my office desk, typing a confirmation email to my parents telling them that I've moved into the base with (no) problem, sitting in a big brown swivel chair and wearing my military overcoat over my military uniform over my normal civvie clothes, and I've still shivering my ass off. Joy.

Personally, I like being too hot rather than too cold. Actually, that's not really accurate either, I should say _prefer_, not _like_. I've done ROTC in high school and boot camp in the military...being too hot's no problem. But fuck cold. Fuck it with all the nukes in the world.

Honestly, this base isn't that bad of a base. I've been to worse on some of my deployments - and arguably better than my dorms at Hargrave, if you could even call 'em dorms to begin with. All this place needs is just a bit of tidying up and some people to occupy it. Nothing worse than a base complete with dorms, a mess hall, giant storages, firing ranges, and the usual stuff you'd need to have a fully functioning base but no one to be in it. Reminds me of those ghost cities in China that I've read about, where companies build entire cities but no one actually ends up living there for whatever reason. Kinda funny how that ends up happening, eh.

You know, now that I think about it, I've always kind of lived by myself. Not exactly a loner, but I've always liked to be by myself, distance myself away from other people who I don't know. I don't even like the word "friend", because honestly, that word's used way too much and way too flimsily to do the word itself any justice - but the few friends I do have, even though I'm at the point where I don't even mind full-on living with them, know that I'm the kinda guy that likes to be alone and left to do his own thing. But even then, this's like...I don't even know. This's like putting it into the extreme - I'm literally in a base that's completely empty. There isn't even any furniture here, that's how empty it is. I mean, I guess you could go out on a limb and say this could be like my greatest fantasy come true, with an entire military complex all to myself for a day before other people arrive, but it sure as hell doesn't feel that way. While I did say I like being by myself, I didn't say I liked being alone and completely isolated from all other human contact. That's stretching it a bit much.

So going from there, you could say I'm looking forward to tomorrow morning, when I'll be scheduled to receive my first naval personnel. But at the same time, I'm not. It's not that I'm afraid of what's going to happen, I'm just straight up confused on what to expect. The documentation I received from Third Echelon stated that my new naval personnel as part of the Moebius Four agreement would be teenage to adolescent females capable of great naval military power, but it was really freakin' unclear about how or what exactly. No details, no nothing. They literally gave me a piece of paper that basically told me, "Alright kid, we've selected you to go over to Japan and command some girls with cannons. Good Luck, Commander."

What the hell am I supposed to imagine them as? Good God. I won't even bother having any expectations of them - I don't want to get myself all disappointed or worried or freaked out or anything, as what tends to happen when I hold expectations about some future event.

I can still hear loud fireworks going off in the distance. The residents of Okinawa appear to still be celebrating New Years', and for good reason. When the Japanese people heard of the news that America would remove troops from Okinawa and give the island back to Japanese hegemony, it was a huge fucking deal. I heard from my superiors and Japanese acquaintances that it was all the newspapers would ever talk about for a month straight ever since they announced it beginning of December. If I were to walk outside, back out to the freezing dockyards, I would still see the flashes of bright fireworks blotching the seawater.

Little do the public know, Japanese or anyone else, that it's actually a clandestine military agreement and venture on behalf of both nations...and that agreement happens to be named the Moebius Four Armament.

I'm still really fucking salty about this whole thing. Like, the _only reason _why I was selected for this assignment was because of my recent promotion, my family ties with the upper echelons of American military command, and my six or seven years of high school and collegiate Japanese under my belt. Well, okay, that's three reasons, but what I'm trying to say is that I just _happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. _They needed someone to send over as a commanding naval officer for the Moebius Four project, and it just so happened that Colonel Kevinson suggested me first as a "volunteer".

Seriously, fuck you, Dad.

And you know what makes me want to resign my post as a Captain in the U.S. Navy? I shit you not, they came up to me and said, "Oh, we're sure you can do just fine living in Okinawa, son. You've been studying Japanese for six years, right? You ought to fit in just fine." Like, _no, you f__ucking delusional military brass who know how to do nothing else but fill out papers and give bullshit orders, _learning a language and going to live in the place that speaks the fucking language _isn't the fucking same! _I wanted to punch Dad when they told me that. I shit you not, I was fucking ready to give him the most satisfying pop in his face. I don't care if they court-martial me or demote me or kick me out of the navy. I'd imagine Mom and Dad both whining about something like keeping the family military honor intact, but seriously, fuck that. The only reason why I'm a goddamn captain of anything is because of my parents, because they happen to know the president and have a whole lotta fucking power in the American military. Ugh.

Which reminds me, all throughout my time at Hargrave, I remember all my instructors trying to suck my dick off because they thought if they gave me preferential treatment at school, they'd be in the warm graces of my parents. My classmates and schoolmates saw this - I mean, you'd have to be fucking dumb in the head to not notice or pick up on it - and most of them started being all sarcastic and derogatory towards me. I can count how many times some of my more trollish classmates paraded before me out in the hallways and as I was walking around campus getting from class to class or from my dorm to the drilling fields and gave me this flashy-ass, ceremonial greeting, like I were some eighteenth century European royalty or aristocrat. No matter what I said or what I did, they'd always do it. I fucking hated it. Maybe that's why they did it, because they knew I didn't like it and wanted to piss me off. The more decent classmates, the ones that were actually worthy of being called human beings, recognized that I was conscious of my whole thing with having parents as high command and understood that I didn't want any part of it, because it sickened me. In America, we've got this saying, being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, meaning that you're born into a fortunate position, that just because of your life circumstances, you're automatically much better off than most people around you and you didn't have to do jack shit to earn it. Like parents, for example. You'd think being born with a silver spoon in my mouth would be nice, but it's not. Maybe if I were a worse human being than I am now, my opinion on this would change. But as it stands, I fucking hate my parents. It's not to say I don't recognize them as family, like, I still hold affection for them as Mom and Dad, but man, it's really hard to think about my parents that way, and partly it's directly their fault, since they raised me like a goddamn soldier. Officer this, Officer that. Don't call me Mom. Don't call him Dad. Ten-hut. Three steps forward. Ready, aim, fire. They brought this on themselves - they have no one to blame but themselves when they find out that my last dying words in combat were "Mom, Dad, go to hell".

Ah shit, I'm writing like I'm all rambling now. I promised myself I wouldn't do that...I guess it's hard to drop bad habits. So why does it feel like for everyone else, it's easy for them to be able to drop bad habits? Fuck it. Rear Admiral Stukov was the one who advised that I keep a journal in order to record my thoughts and experiences during my service in Japan as part of the Moebius Four project. He said it'd help me get my thoughts in order and keep me focused on the job. I mean, it's not that I disagree, even though I didn't want to keep a fucking journal, I do agree that it would help keep me composed and handle whatever difficulties or other bumps in the road that I trip over in a manageable way. But it's an obligation. I never kept a journal before - I sat here spinning my pen around for nearly half an hour before I knew how to start. To me, keeping a goddamn journal's just another lousy task that I've gotta do before going to sleep. I mean, I don't know what'll happen three months into the job. Maybe I'll change my opinion. I'm pretty malleable when it comes to opinion - it's not like I'll hold a permanent, unwavering opinion on something if I can be convinced well enough to change it. But as it is now, this journal's just another one of those things that I really don't need in my life.

So in other words, this journal is my homework. For fuck's sake, I still have homework when I'm about to command a top-secret military platoon. What the fuck is wrong with this world.

I suppose I'll go boil up some water in the mess hall after this and eat some Shin ramen. For some reason, I found a box of freshly packaged Shin ramen in one of the cupboards in the kitchen. I don't know who put it there or how it even managed to get there in the first place, but I suppose if there's one thing I'm thankful for, it's that box of Shin ramen. As a huge fan of ramen, something like that's enough to make me shut up about everything that I'm pissed off about. Weird, isn't it, that something as simple as an unhealthy as shit bowl of instant, industrialized and chemically produced ramen can satisfy me. You know, that's actually not a good trait for me to have...thankfully it doesn't pop up very often.

And if it doesn't feel like home, you can do what I do,

Just pretend you don't feel so alone.

Heh...well, I mean, you could say that feeling alone isn't exactly the problem here.

The fireworks are gone, but now there's goddamn firecrackers going off all over the place. Guess I'll have to crash for tonight listening to the damn firecrackers...maybe I'll just keep my headphones over my ears and leave the music on.


	2. January 4th, 2014

January 4th, 2014.

Just as I'd been told, the naval personnel arrived. And just as I'd been told, they're all ship girls.

I mean, look, I understand the whole female thing about us addressing ships as ladies. All my older superiors and officers do it. And sometimes my classmates comrades, and the younger officers catch themselves doing it from time to time.

But this is too fucking literal. Way too literal.

Enough of my own sentiments for a moment. Today at 0730 hours, five naval personnel - ah fuck it, I'm just calling them fleet girls - were helied in from Yokosuka Naval Yard up in mainland Japan. Their names are Fubuki, Inazuma, Murakumo, Samidare, and Sazanami.

Sweet fucking Jesus, talk about bringing up a sensitive topic, this is a goddamn reincarnation of old war wounds, isn't it? They're the old Japanese World War Two destroyer ships, all of them! They freakin' moefied them and turned the ships themselves into goddamn teenagers! My brain hurts already. Anyway...

First Fubuki-Class Destroyer, Type 1, naval number DD-35, 吹雪, or Fubuki. I'm trying to practice my kanji as much as I can. Fubuki means "blizzard" in Japanese. What a badass name for a rather ordinary teenage Japanese girl...or so she comes off as. I mean, she's basically your typical, dare I even say, stereotypical Japanese teenage girl - quiet, talks only when spoken to whenever I'm around or when she's on duty, courteus, blah blah, you probably already know. Seems like she's going to be cooperative, at least...or so I hope. She doesn't seem like the kind to cause trouble at all, so I'm gonna be on my guard that if something goes wrong between me and her, it's probably my fault somehow.

Fourth Akatsuki-Class Destroyer, Fubuki-Class Type 3, 電, or Inazuma. Inazuma means "lightning". Again, a badass name for a super-shy girl. She doesn't even _look_ like a teenager, more like a sixth grader, that's how short she is! Holy fuck, what were they thinking when they...is "constructed" even the word for it? When they "made" her? God, that sounds so wrong. I mean, I was told to command them like I do the crews for normal ships, which I've done, but man, it's way different giving orders to crews of dozens or even hundreds of men on a ship than it is telling girls who look like they should be in middle school what to do. If anyone doesn't want to believe me, they can take my place and see for it themselves. But for some reason, the other girls told me not to try to piss her off too badly, otherwise she'll turn particularly nasty. I have no idea what they mean by that...but I'm not stupid enough to try and find out.

Fifth Fubuki-Class Destroyer, Type 1, naval number DD-39, 叢雲, or Murakumo. Murakumo means "gathering clouds", which, I guess is a fitting name. If you glance at her quickly, her hair kind of looks like lofty clouds, but I don't know why there are those two head arrays just floating over her head. What kind of miraculous science allows _that _to be possible? Whatever, it gives her a bit of a unique look, and it'll help me remember her name, so it's fine. But she has this snarky sarcasm in her tone when she talked to me, like she's looking down on me for not having that great of Japanese. Maybe it's also because she's resentful of having an American commander like me, which, I mean, I guess I can understand, you know given Japan's and America's relationship during the war that they were in when they were ships. I mean, I myself am resentful of being here in the first place. But because of that, I'm really not looking forward to working with her. I can tell our gears are gonna grind from day one...

Sixth Shiratsuyu-Class Destroyer, 五月雨, or Samidare. Samidare apparently refers to the rainy season between spring and summer. She's easily the prettiest among the girls, my God. Like, I've seen girls back home who've dyed their hair blue, but they all turned out to look not so great. At least, in my opinion. But man, whatever they did to make her hair look like that worked out damn well. Plus, she's got the longest hair I've ever fucking seen. Like, that could be a world record, the ratio of the length of her hair to her height. She's super nice and understanding, every time I stumbled over my words while speaking my broken-as-fuck Japanese, she finishes my sentence for me. Like, Inazuma's like Fubuki but much more shy, but Samidare's on the other end of the spectrum, cheerful, polite, and unafraid to speak to me, unlike most of them. I could even get myself to like her...just maybe, maybe.

Ninth Ayanami-Class Destroyer, Fubuki-Class Type 2, naval number DD-53, 漣, or Sazanami. Sazanami means "ripples", as in ripples in the water, I guess. She's really friendly around the other girls, but she's like Fubuki around me. Plus, she's got pink hair and got a rabbit hanging around her on her shoulder. She's a bit of an oddball, all I'll say.

So now it's me, five ship girls, and a entire base to ourselves. Now I have no more excuse to say it's rather lonely here.

They didn't have much to move into their dorms. The dorms were already divided up into different ship classes and types - the destroyers dorm is fucking_ huge_. It's bigger than all the other dorms combined...I guess I should expect a lot more destroyers later on. But the thing is, when I tried to help them move their stuff in, they stared at me like I was a damn freak. Even Samidare didn't want me to help them, I could tell. They tried to convince me that they could handle it on their own - like, when I said they didn't have much to move in, they still had stuff like their bedding, bedsheets, casual clothes, and other stuff that ordinary girls their age would happen to have into their dorms, so it was still going to take some time. It got to the point where I told them straight up, "This is an order; let me help you move in," and only then would they let me. It felt like a bad mistake the entire time - I mean, yeah, I guess I was intruding in their own dorms, which, as a guy, that would sound pretty suspect, but I was just helping them move in, that's all. Surely they knew that. I've had other superior officers help me move my shit around when I was serving in the Navy, even at Hargrave, too. But it was clear that because I was there, everyone was uncomfortable, and because of that, I became uncomfortable too. Who knew that just trying to help would screw everything up. Is it because they don't expect their own officers to help them with personal things like moving their stuff into their new dorms? I don't know, it could be because of any weird reason. I should've expected this; that there'd be so many things that're done differently here than what I'm used to back in America. I'm kicking myself over how I didn't take this into consideration. That's one of the jobs as a navy officer; you take everything into consideration, no matter what you're doing. So my failure to do that is irritating the shit out of me.

This whole thing happened again later on, earlier tonight. When it came to dinnertime at 1830 hours, I was already in the kitchen looking at the groceries they had helied in with the girls so we'd have something to cook and eat for at least a week or so, and Inazuma and Fubuki come in and immediately try to chase me out. Well, not exactly _chase _me out, just tell me that they could handle the cooking themselves. My first instinct was to tell them that I would make dinner just for tonight for courtesy's sake, you know, since they're girls and I just wanted to make myself at least somewhat likeable. It'd be bothersome to have to work with five Murakumos, after all. But I remembered the whole thing with helping them move their stuff in, and I let them make their own dinner - well, they made some for me, too, which, honestly, I was surprised about. I'm used to having to deal with sailors not bother to make me my dinner back in the Navy, for a variety of reasons, so the fact that they even bothered to remember mine was a pleasant surprise, needless to say. I thought I'da made it awkward enough already with the whole dorm thing that they wouldn't want to make me dinner, but I guess I was wrong about that. Even still..._  
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You know what, I'll go talk to Samidare tomorrow. I won't go talk to them now, it's 2250 hours right now and their curfew is 2300 hours. I'm sure Samidare will be willing to explain what's going on.

I bet that the girls are nervous being here under my command, the command of a foreigner, the command of a twenty-year-old American commander. But I'm also willing to bet that the girls don't know that I'm just as nervous as they are. I don't wanna make myself look like an idiot or an uncultured American asshole, I've had to deal with plenty of people like that myself already in the military and in college. It's too bad that all I wanna do is do my job right, but I won't be able to because of all these obscure differences between me and the girls under my command that I don't yet understand or can even identify correctly.


	3. January 5th, 2014

January 5th, 2014.

It was fucking tough getting up in the morning, my jetlag's kicking in now. You'd think after about two or three years of straight deployment to places all around the world...the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean near the Holy Land, mainly, because of my major deployments...I would be used to this global travel phenomenon called jetlag. But I'm not.

Not yet.

And sometimes, I can still smell the sand, the sea salt, and the cannon barrel gunpowder when I wake up.

Or is that just what this base smells like? I guess it doesn't matter, nor would it come as a surprise.

I can't slack off on my own training regimen. All those drills, the physical torture they put us through at Hargrave and in boot camp, I got a sense of keeping myself healthy and fit drilled and pounded into me. You could think of all of us at school and at boot camp as a mass of misshapen tools going through the forge and the anvil, getting pounded out to be just right. It's a corny analogy, but it works.

Woke up at around 0600 hours. Spent an hour setting up a training course like the ones at Hargrave. Since I don't exactly have the same stuff here, I had to make do with what I got: After stretches and warm-up, I started with three laps around the base - I think it's about two miles total. It was nice running along the docks with the sea breeze rolling along. There were some empty fuel barrels that someone cleaned out sittin' in the warehouses, so I brought 'em out and did hundred-meter relays with them, grabbin' the barrels one at a time and running hundred meters with 'em and putting them all from one place to the other. Then I went out and swam a mile or so out in the sea. The waters aren't that deep where the base's located, so it's relatively safe for swimming. Not too sure about later on throughout the year, though. After that, I got out my military cadet's sword from my graduation that I've kept and practiced my swordsmanship with it.

I get that nowadays, swords are outta fashion. A gun's more efficient. Through the marvels of science, you can make a small piece of lead get propelled by a chemical reaction at speeds fast enough to punch holes into people's bodies with said piece of lead. And if you hit people in the right places, one piece of lead is all you'll need, and all you needed to do was pull a goddamn trigger. So much effort put into that, I'm sure.

But there's something elegant in a sword. Put a sword next to a gun, and tell me what you see. I see a reserved, unpretentious honesty to the sword. With a gun, you don't know how it'll need to be operated in order for it to work the way you want. Guns can be deceiving, and oftentimes complicated. But with swords, you don't need to overthink it. Just grab the sword by the handle, and you're armed. A simple weapon that's been with humans ever since we found out how to work with metals and such. Simple, straightforward, lethal, and elegant. No wonder "gentlemen" of sixteenth to eighteenth century genteel Europe wore swords.

Murakumo saw me practicing my swordsmanship, which surprised me when I realized she was watching me silently. I was like, fifteen or twenty minutes or so into my practice when I finally noticed her watching me. She asked me about my sword, where I got it, so I told her that it was given to me by my parents for my graduation ceremony at Hargrave. She asked me why I was practicing my swordsmanship, and I told her it was to keep myself fit and not forget how to use a sword.

She asked me if I ever killed someone with my sword before, and I told her that I did once, so she asked me about that.

I asked her why a subordinate like her was asking such personal questions like that to me, her superior, and she shut up real quick.

Just from that alone, Murakumo seems like she's not sarcastic and sour-faced all the time. It was nice talking with her about random stuff, and she didn't talk to me like I was some goddamn _gaijin_, which is Japanese for foreigner, I think. And at the very least she's willing to recognize me as her superior, which I'm relieved about. At least I can have some faith in her that she'll do as I order her to.

I told her I would tell her if she insisted, and Murakumo said she wanted to know. It's not like it's a glorious story or anything: one time at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia, there was a terrorist who attempted to hold one of our higher-ranking admirals hostage when we went over to visit. The only weapon I had on me at the time was my sword, so I just struck him down after he shot me once in the shin. I showed Murakumo the scar in my right shin as proof.

She offered to have a spar with me, which surprised me. I didn't expect her to know how to use a sword, and besides, I'd imagine she'd know how to use a katana or a Japanese sword, so I don't know how well I'd do against that, so I declined. That, and my sword isn't meant for sparring. Like, seriously, it's a ceremonial sword for a reason. Speaking of katanas, if I really fucking wanted a sword that I'd use to reliably slice people's heads off, I'd go for a katana. I've used one before, and it was great. Maybe I'll pick up a katana while I'm here. Murakumo seemed a bit disappointed at my decline, but when I asked her if I should've accepted, she just shook it off and told me not to worry about it.

I finished up sword practice with Murakumo watching the rest of the time since she asked if she could just watch me, and I said okay. Felt a bit weird, practicing my swordsmanship with someone watching me, but it's whatever.

As soon as I stopped, Inazuma and Samidare came out with some fresh tea that they were brewing up. Apparently Samidare, Inazuma, and Murakumo are early birds, which I didn't expect. There were rules about how the ship girls needed to conduct themselves, like curfews and such, in the documentation that I got before coming here, but it's really hard for me to enforce them strictly to teenage girls who're supposed to be my subordinates, so it's not like I'm gonna go out and enforce a set time that everyone should wake up and go to sleep, to be honest. I asked about Sazanami and Fubuki, and from what I gather, they like to sleep in a bit later than the others.

Samidare and Inazuma seemed pretty surprised that I was even up this early. They didn't expect me as an officer to be about this early. Now, I dunno how the Japanese military conducts their officers, but all the officers I've ever had to deal with get up hella early, and I'm no exception. More like force of habit and conduct more than out of my own personal conviction, though. Murakumo was the only one who didn't seem all that surprised.

I brought up the thing I wanted to talk about with Samidare, about the whole dorm moving thing yesterday. Just as I'd thought, Samidare confirmed for me that subordinates in Japan didn't necessarily receive direct help from their superiors unless they were very close. I've done some months in South Korea, and there I was told that bosses go out to drink with their employees all the time; in fact, it's actually rude if you were to decline an invitation to drink with your boss, and here I was thinkin' that since Korean and Japanese people have their connections, their mannerisms would be similar. Oh, how wrong I guess I was. I can understand; I'd feel weird too if someone who's supposed to be givin' me orders suddenly drops by my room and offers to help move my shit around. Though, personally, I wouldn't care.

"But - but I'm sure we'll be able to grow closer as time goes on, Commander!"

These were Samidare's words. I don't know how true that'll become or to what extent it'll become. I don't know how I'd cope with it either way.

I mean, do I _want _to become close with these girls? It would be nice, but...

After breakfast, I took a quick shower and finished furnishing out my office. I meant to do this the day I got here, but setting up my room took a lot longer than I had thought, so I was planning on arranging my office yesterday, but yesterday didn't give me a chance either. Took me another hour or so - I had trouble deciding where I'd hang my sword along the wall, and eventually I settled for the wall behind my desk. Checked my emails on my laptop, and I found the documents dealing with what the ship girls're supposed to do and read through 'em.

We're going to be getting supplies for the girls' drilling and training tomorrow, along with some more secretarial personnel. Apparently the documents say that I can also choose one or so of my own ship girls to be the secretary and help me with paperwork and other pencil-pushing shit.

Wait, then what's the point of sending over that secretarial personnel.

Goddamn it.

The documents also contained the kinds of drills that the girls would need. Having drilled sailors and soldiers alike, it came natural to me. I mentioned McClellan before somewhere; I've got a talent for being able to turn ordinary young men into good soldiers. College students, jocks, poor kids off the streets who joined the navy 'cause they didn't have anything better to do that would pay them as well, doesn't matter who they are. I know how to drill them, teach them how to march, shoot, and follow my fucking orders.

In other words, I'm really good at telling people to shoot other people and telling people to go die for their country.

Whatever that means.

But obviously what I've done to drill soldiers back home, the knowledge and experience I've got doing that ain't going to transfer over neatly. No matter how you look at them, these are ordinary girls I've gotta deal with here. I can't drill them the same way expecting the same results. Like, I've seen other officers try doing the same shit they do over and over in different scenarios expecting it to work. They go all "Oh, what's yooooooooooo' name? Oh, it don't mattaaahhhh, tell me _maaaahhhhh _name!" while slapping the insides of their elbows with two fingers like they're slapping a heroin patch into their veins.

Seems like the girls went around today cleaning everything that I hadn't gotten to, like the dusting and the wiping. They seemed surprised that someone had already gone around and cleaned up most of the shit around the base, and when I told them it was me who did it, they were even more surprised.

Nothing else interesting happened today, since drilling doesn't start until tomorrow. We just chilled for today, so I spent today sleeping to recover from the jetlag. In fact, I woke up after six hours in the afternoon just to write this, and I'm probably going straight to bed after this.


	4. January 6th, 2014

Lots happened today, so this might be a longer entry for tonight. You know, I'm already kinda starting to like writing these journals. It's not exactly what I'd call _fun_, but it's...how should I put it, I don't mind doing these now. I mean, I guess the whole not wanting to write these kinda died off real quick and now all of a sudden it's like second nature now. Weird.

You know what it is? I think it's 'cause this journal's the only thing that I have where I can just pour in all the thoughts that I can't speak out loud. It's like this journal's the only thing that I can talk to, the real shit that's goin' on in my head that no one else around me right now'll get or understand.

Holy shit, guys, I think I just figured out the purpose of a journal. Epiphany, mind goes boom, all that good stuff. I didn't even need to blow a joint for this one.

Not that I've done any weed in my life, so it's not like I would know how that feels.

All sarcasm aside, like I said, today was a busy day. The secretarial staff and the girls' munition rounds and other weapons supplies get helied in today. Three new staff to help me out with secretary and management stuff, to be exact.

And they're all girls. Am I seriously gonna be the only guy in this entire fucking base? I can't be the only one packing the testosterone here, right? They're gonna give me some guys to come help me out with this shit, right?

Right?

'Cause if I didn't think this was kinda getting to be a joke before, I fucking do now. I'm the only guy in a huge navy base with eight other girls, and absolutely zero guys. Other than me.

Gender issues aside, I met our new staff first thing in the morning when they ferried in the supplies.

Ooyodo's my secretary for the time being. She reminds me of Fubuki, only taller and maybe a bit more grown up, no offense intended towards Fubuki. She wears glasses, so it's easy for me to differentiate her from the rest. They say glasses are serious business, after all. When I showed her around in my office, apparently she was impressed by how well I kept my documents and other papers and stuff. I mean, it wasn't anything fancy that I did. I just organized them by relevancy and by importance in manila files that I put into folder racks on the side of my desk, that's all. I have this sneaking suspicion that either Ooyodo just wants to be on my good side by complementing me, or she's just not used to having superiors who have any organizational ability. I hope it's the latter. She said she'll also take care of general communications between the base and the government, so I guess I can rely on her to take care of that. She seems the reliable kind, so I'm gonna take a risk and bank my hopes on her that she can do her job.

It's not that I'm expecting her not to do her job, but it's 'cause every other time I've entrusted someone to do their goddamn job, they never do. It's nothing against Ooyodo, but I really do wish that she'll be as reliable as she looks.

Akashi's our repair specialist, so she brought with her lots'a tools and repair materials that she'll need to patch up the girls when they get damaged or hurt which we spent a good hour or so stacking up. Unlike the others when I helped them move their belongings into their dorms, Akashi was completely chill with me helping her move the stuff into the warehouses and the repair rooms. I wasn't too sure how she'd react, seeing the reactions of the others the other day. Akashi's a lot like Samidare - unassuming, cheerful, and most importantly, works efficiently and with every intent to get the task at hand done. As an American, I can appreciate this. If there's one thing an American like me knows how do to, it's working efficiently as possible and getting shit done.

Well, that doesn't apply to _all _Americans, obviously, like any racial generalization or stereotype, but I certainly fall into that category.

I asked Akashi (with my subpar Japanese, mind you, and just like Samidare, she didn't shy away from my less than perfect Japanese and helped me along, thank God) how exactly she would go about repairing the girls if they were to be injured. She explained that she's like a human surgeon and doctor, able to treat any kind of wound that they would receive out in battle. As long as they can reach home base again where she can properly treat them, Akashi would be able to repair them back to full health, though, obviously, that being said, it would depend on just how bad their wounds are. Since these girls apparently don't get sick from conventional human diseases, battle wounds would be the only things that she'd have to worry about. I guess I don't have to worry about catching any sicknesses from the girls. Akashi also showed me these things called instant-repair buckets that're stored inside the crates that the heli brought in with them, and apparently they're filled with a special kind of water containing auto-repairing nanoparticles that'll fix up any wound that they come into contact with if they're poured onto a damaged ship girl. She warned me that they should only be reserved for emergency situations in which a ship girl desperately needs a way to repair a life-threatening wound and there is literally no other way to receive treatment. And even then, Akashi said it wouldn't completely heal them, only keep them alive long enough until Akashi herself could treat them directly if their wound is that bad. But the buckets can basically instantly heal any wound that was moderate to light, whatever that means.

And then, the third girl. Not even Ooyodo or Akashi knew what her goddamn name was. None of us know. What the fuck? Why is there this girl in this base without a freakin' name? She hardly ever talks, too. The only thing I ever heard her say was "yes" when I asked her if she wanted some dinner when it was time to make dinner. Apparently, accordin' to Ooyodo, she's supposed to be the "secondary secretary", which I have no fucking clue what that's supposed to mean. Ooyodo said that if I had any questions regarding my post, I ought'a go 'n ask her, but it's kinda tough to go talk to someone whose name you don't know, nobody else knows, probably the girl herself doesn't even know, for all I know. I literally asked that girl what her name was no less 'n twenty times, and every single fucking time she'd just stare back at me like I was supposed to know. By the end of it, I got so pissed off that I just started calling her "Error" 'cause, you know, it might've been an error or a mistake that she was sent here. I thought it would get her agitated enough to speak, 'cause here I am assuming that Japanese people are sensitive to insults, at least a lot more so than Americans are, but she just rolled with it, so now she won't respond to me unless I actually call out "Error".

Oh lawd, what have I done.

That girl's like a goddamn pet, now that I think about it. I decide calling her this retarded name, and now she won't respond to anything else from me. Talk about the world's greatest fuck-up.

Like, she looks like a damn elementary-school kid, what the hell is she even doing here! ? ! ! ?

Oh well. It ain't like I even have a say in the matter. I expected crazy shit to happen, and now they're happening. I mean, look, I've been through some really stressful times. But somehow, this's the most stressful, I can fucking feel it, and it's all snowballing from the fact that this girl I called "Error" 'cause I decided to be mean to her now thinks her own name is "Error". FailFish, FailFish, FailFish.

In other news, drilling started today. Since I'm not too familiar with how the drills are supposed to go with the girls, Ooyodo directed the ship girls for me while I got myself acquainted with the drills so I can start training the new ship girls when they arrive, whenever they do arrive. I watched them for a bit, drilling in the waters just off the docks, from my office. My office's got a helluva view of the harbor, so I can't complain.

After their drills were done, I began my drilling for them. As part of the contract stated in the Moebius Four Armament, the officer sent to command the ship girls (me) would drill the girls as an officer would for ground soldiers or sailors. Like I've mentioned before, this's something that normally I'm quite good at. I know how to drill men and women into becoming good soldiers. I'm not so confident if I can do the same thing to girls who aren't anywhere near looking like adults.

But I didn't let these sentiments prevent me from drilling them the same way as I would any other ordinary army or navy recruit. More like, I can't afford to. It's my fucking job. I do my fucking work, and if it's to drill middle-school girls, then so be it, even if I'm going to hell afterwards. When I started drillin' 'em, it's kinda like the feeling you get when you're on a springboard forty feet above a swimming pool, and you're about to do your first high-jump dive, and you've got that horrible gut-wrenching feeling of wondering whether you're just a massive fucking idiot for doing what you're just about to do. Take a deep breath, and just jump right in.

Focus on the job now, deal with the repercussions later. As an American, I would know all about this, wouldn't I.

As I expected, much to my dismay, the girls reacted horribly to my drilling. Clearly it wasn't something they could handle. Inazuma and Sazanami were on their knees crying their eyes out barely twenty minutes into it, and Samidare and Fubuki were clearly ready to join them too, but they managed to hang on. Only Murakumo lasted through it, but I could tell she was fighting herself to make sure she wasn't going to flip out and punch me right in the fucking dome.

Ooyodo and Akashi and Error were watching me drill them. I saw Ooyodo inching forward towards me, but Akashi held her back, shaking her head. Error simply watched. That girl's fucking creepy. Afterwards, once the drilling was done, Ooyodo came to speak with me about my drilling style. She pleaded with me to go easier on the girls. She used the same exact reason that I just mentioned a few paragraphs before, that they aren't exactly adults or know how to cope with the rigors of standard drilling in the army or the navy. I told her that as much as I would like to go easy on them, I was here to do my job as a drill instructor, and that I wouldn't treat them any differently because I expected them to be fine adults already.

You can imagine what the rest of the evening felt like in the base.

My own drill orders are still bouncing around in my fucking head.

_"LEFT, RIGHT! LEFT, RIGHT! STEAAAAAAAAAA-DY! TURN! LEFT, RIGHT! LEFT, RIGHT!"_

Now, I'm positively certain that Inazuma, Fubuki, and Sazanami hate the living shit out of me. And if Ooyodo and Samidare liked me somewhat, they sure as hell don't now. Murakumo's the same as ever. I guess being sarcastic and caustic helps with dealing with shitty situations, so she hasn't changed. Akashi understands my position. She knows that it's my job to drill them, even if I have to break hearts to do it, so I think she's gonna be the only one with whom I can have a decent conversation with anytime soon.

It's gonna be a really, _really _long while before they get their drills down perfectly. Until then, I ain't letting up. Even if I feel like the shittiest human being on Earth for reducing the girls into nothing more than miserable piles of tears, it's my fucking job.

Hey, it's still better than sending hundreds of men to their deaths.


	5. January 7th, 2014

My laptop's been fucking up. It's nearly four years old now, and I wasn't allowed the time to get another before getting my ass deployed here to Okinawa. So now I have to deal with this fucking piece 'a crap until I manage to cop a ride over to the mainland or back to America...whichever comes first. Like, seriously, can't you fucking open a single goddamn document from my email without making me wait my ass off for like five minutes staring at the damn screen. For fuck's sake, seriously.

I promise you, one 'a these days, I'm gonna smash the shit outta my computer. Just you wait.

But not yet...I still need to finish the third season of Shakugan no Shana.

I saw Error going around with a cat in her arms. I don't know where the bloody hell she managed to pick up a cat, 'cause she for sure didn't come here with one, and for sure I didn't hear or see any on base, but somehow she managed to pop one outta nowhere. She calls him (or her? I'm not sure) Batsubyou.

What's really strange is that sometimes, I see her holding Batsubyou up by its front legs.

What's even stranger's that Batsubyou doesn't seem to give a damn.

The world I know is all just a giant fucking lie when I'm seeing a girl walk around holding a cat who could care less up by its front legs.

Drills went on as usual today. When it came around to the afternoon, where my drills are scheduled, Ooyodo took me aside and pleaded with me to go easy on them. I told her the same exact shit as I did yesterday: I wouldn't let up on them. And that's exactly what I did. But now this time, since the girls already knew what to expect, they were completely dreading it. I could see it in their eyes when I first marched in front of them for the start of their drilling. If I were any better of a human being, I would've most certainly gone easier on them. But officers unfortunately can't afford to be good human beings. They never can, if their job description includes training men to become efficient and professional killers and sending those exact same men to their own deaths.

Just like yesterday, Inazuma and Sazanami were the first to break, even faster than yesterday, too, 'cause my harsh style of drilling already traumatized them. Fubuki joined them today this time, leaving only Samidare and Murakumo able to carry out the rest of the drills. This time, however, I called Ooyodo and Akashi over to carry the ones who couldn't take it over to the infirmary. As we watched them get carried off, I asked - well, demanded is a more appropriate word here - Samidare and Murakumo if they intended on joining them and failing the drill. They didn't say anything, so I took it as a no and continued. But since you can't really have a good drill with only two soldiers, I had to cut the drills short for today. Had Fubuki not crumbled like Inazuma and Sazanami had, we would've kept the drilling time the same, but that wasn't the case. I told Samidare and Murakumo that the drilling time that wasn't covered today would be added on for tomorrow - and at that moment, Samidare burst into tears and fell to her knees, wailing like a kid would for her mom.

Murakumo just gave me this look of pure and utter hate before helping Samidare up and leading her away.

I spent lots'a time out on the harbor and the pier, wondering if the way I was drillin' 'em was really the best way. Clearly it wasn't something they could handle. But I didn't know how else to drill them. I understand that they're not adults. They're not meant to drill the same way as adults do since their mentalities are the equivalent of those of middle-schoolers and high-schoolers. For all intents and purposes, _they're still teenage girls._

Then what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Am I supposed to go easy on them? Then I wouldn't be doing my motherfucking job. The superiors in charge of the Moebius Four Armament expect them to be drilled just as well as any conventional soldier or sailor. When military officials come to visit Okinawa, they're gonna be expecting a full platoon review. I'm gonna get my ass roasted if they think that the girls aren't drilled or trained well enough. I've always prided myself upon being able to do my job, whatever it needed me to do, the very best I can. I've never before had to worry about failing it. But as it stands, if the soldiers I drill can't even handle it in the first place, how'll they even learn to drill? And it's not even _their _fault.

It's obvious that I'm the one who needs to change something in order to figure out the proper way to drill them. But being a Navy Commander who's drilled men and women to rank-and-file discipline, I'm at a loss for what exactly to change in my regimen.

I ended up wandering around the docks until the sun went down. I basically watched the sun set from late afternoon to dusk. Sometimes, I find myself getting all lost in the flow of time. It's weird how it happens - all it takes is one thought to preoccupy my mind entirely, and all of a sudden, before I know it, I've just let a handful of hours go straight past me.

So this's where things get interesting. When I came back, it's around dinnertime, so I went to the mess hall to see if I could grab something to eat, and I find all the girls gathered there at one of the long tables that seats like thirty people or so. I found them talking already, so I sneaked in, all sneaky-beaky-like as the British would say, to eavesdrop.

Inazuma was crying about how she couldn't handle my drills - which probably means they were complaining about me. Sazanami asked Ooyodo if the latter could do something to convince me to stop giving them these drills, but Ooyodo said that she had already tried asking me to go easier on them, but that I wouldn't.

Then, Murakumo said this...

"What the hell! Just because he's American, he thinks he can just boss us around like that, drilling us like some hellmaster! Seriously, what the hell! Why doesn't he just go back home so that we can get another commander who isn't as big of a fucking douchebag like he is? Fuck this!"

That got everyone quiet for a second. Samidare started to say something about how it didn't have anything to do with me being American, bless her goddamn soul, but Murakumo quickly shut her out, saying that things would've been so much different if they'd just gotten a Japanese Admiral instead. At least if they'd gotten a Japanese officer, they'd be able to understand and go easier on them.

It was then that I realized that there's this big perception difference between their expectations and my own way of doing things. I do shit in a way that's indiscriminate and applicable to everyone, like my drills. This goes directly opposite of what they're used to, which is circumstantial stuff. Basing things off circumstances, the kinds of people who're dealt with in the situation at hand. I'd look this shit up later online, and I found out that Americans are a lot more unbiased and will prioritize law and order, logic, and emphasize "the way things should be done" over personal ties and stuff, whereas other cultures tend to base stuff like personal connections and friendships above their perception of the law, something like that, I'm not gonna bother going into detail about it.

I guess I can understand where they're coming from now.

Akashi tried defending me, saying that it was my job, that it was my duty. See, she knew. Akashi explained that I was under lots of expectations and pressures from my own side of the armament program, so I didn't have a choice but to drill them hard. Murakumo countered that I was just looking to get a promotion. The argument quickly devolved into a heated, ferocious argument of Murakumo versus somebody else every other minute, so since I was getting tired of that shit, I walked out and cleared my throat to get their attention.

When they realized that I had been listening in on 'em for a long time, they all freaked the fuck out. Even Murakumo's face went pale as soon as I cleared my throat. Inazuma immediately went cowerin' behind Ooyodo. Probably 'cause she's scared that I'm gonna be dishin' out punishments for slanderous talk against their own superior officer behind his back or something.

And _you _get thirty floggings, and _you _get thirty floggings, and _EVERYONE _gets thirty -

I'll stop.

Once I walked out, it was dead fuckin' quiet. I just took my sweet fuckin' time walking over to them at the table, not makin' a single word until I was right up with them. I asked them what they were talking about. No one dared to talk, so I repeated myself real nicely that I wanted an answer. From this point on, I remember the conversation vividly, though I might be paraphrasing some stuff, since English translations can turn out to be rather variable.

Murakumo spoke first. She said, "You seemed nice and all from the start, but then you - you turned into someone completely different! You're not our commander, you're just some mindless American officer who's hellbent on drilling us!"

Ooyodo stopped her short and said, "Murakumo, you are speaking to your superior officer! Race or persona does not matter, now you show him the respect that he deserves from you as his subordinate!"

Murakumo turned around and yelled back at Ooyodo, "Stay out of this, Ooyodo-san! I don't think he deserves to be my officer, so I won't show him any fucking respect! I don't know about the rest of you, but to me, he's no longer _my _officer!"

Ooyodo was about to say something back, but I stopped her. I went ahead and took off my Navy cap, my Commander insignia medal, and my coat, put the cap and medal into the coat and folded the coat up, and put it on the table. The girls were stunned that I would do something like that. Murakumo, too. She was lookin' at me all that time like, what the hell are you doing, that kinda look. I mean, I know that the Japanese sometimes speak nonverbally, so I thought it would mean something to them, and it did.

"Now, I'm no longer your officer," I told Murakumo and the girls. "Talk to me. What's the problem here?"

It took a while for the girls to digest the situation, but Murakumo's the one who speaks first again.

"Why do you drill us so hard?" Murakumo asked. "I mean, I know it's your job. I know we're supposed to be going through these drills. But don't you think you're doing something wrong if half of us are crying not even halfway into them? Why can't you understand that?"

I then asked, "So when you were talking about this before I showed myself, you mentioned something about me being American, that just because I'm American i think I can boss you girls around like this. Can you explain that for me, Murakumo? Can you explain to me how me being American has to do with anything?"

Murakumo tensed up real badly. My question put her on the fucking spot. It was obvious that Murakumo didn't want to repeat herself, because that would mean she would be admitting to racism, and seeing that nowadays, Japan and America are on good terms, she didn't want to make herself look bad. So she refused to answer me.

"You're not going to answer me, then?" I asked her. "If you don't want to answer, then don't answer, alright?"

So she didn't. Then I looked around at everyone and told them this.

I told them that the reason why I was drilling them, in their opinion, so toughly was because this was exactly how I drilled soldiers and sailors back home in America. Tough, strict to the point of overbearing and controlling, and unforgiving. Just because I was in a different base, a different environment, and a different country, it wouldn't mean I was going to drill people any differently, even if it meant that the soldiers I would train would end up being young girls who look like they should be in middle school or high school. While to the girls, this might seem like inconsideration and a lack of situational awareness, I told them that I was drilling them because I have faith in them that they, too, can become good soldiers that I've produced in the past. I wasn't going to insult them by giving them the disrespect of less strict drilling just because they're girls or just because they're younger. If they've been sent by their country to this base, and if my country's sent me to this base to drill them, then I'm going to do my goddamn job to the best of my ability.

I also told them that I didn't want to be here either. I explained to them a bit of my side of the story, how I was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, that the girls may as well have someone else, someone maybe worse than I am, as their commanding officer. I told them that despite this, despite my own personal feelings about not wanting to be here, being in a different nation, on an island cut off physically from most of civilization, most importantly away from home, I wasn't about to let that get in the way of my duty as their officer.

I told them that if they hated the way I drilled them, or even perhaps if they hated me directly for whatever reason that they might have, then that was fine. They can hate me all they want. I wasn't here to make friendships, make relationships, make memories or whatever. I'm here to command the Moebius Four Platoon. And I'm not doing it for money - I'm still getting paid my regular Navy salary, out of Uncle Sam's debt-ridden pockets. I'm not doing it to get laid, I already said I'm not interested in relationships. I'm not doing it for a promotion, I already got one by "volunteering" for the Moebius Armament. I'm here to do my duty, to serve my country. I wasn't trying to paint myself as this self-righteous, all-holy idealistic asshole, but I made it clear that I do believe in getting the job done. That's what a soldier or an officer does, in my opinion. Follow orders, get shit done. If there are problems along the way, either solve them or ignore them. Not always the best way to go about it, but if you're a soldier or an officer, you have more important problems to deal with.

I then turned back to Murakumo and told her, "If you no longer recognize me as your commanding officer, Murakumo, I give you permission to leave this base and sail back for your home port. You have the rest of tonight to formulate your decision. If you are still present in this base, then I will assume that you have once again recognized my position as your commanding officer."

After that, I picked up my stuff and turned to leave, but I remembered the whole American thing that Murakumo was complaining about and turned back at her again.

I told her, "By the way, I know that Americans do things differently than Japanese people do. I also realize that you all might have some animosity going on towards me, because you all were ships way back in World War Two, and America was your enemy, all that stuff. This is eighty years after that. Maybe I had an ancestor who might've fought in the war, but to me, I don't give a shit. I'm not your friend, Murakumo, but I'm not your enemy either. I think we can agree on that."

Drop the mic, get the fuck out. Boom.

I've been spending the rest of the night in my own room, catching up on some anime and sending email reports to headquarters in Tokyo in as best Japanese as I can muster. Goddamn it, now that I think about it, I forgot to order a backup SSD for my computer before coming here. Shipping is gonna be a bitch...

I haven't seen any of the girls since.

Now, I get to go to sleep knowing full well that I may have just alienated every single one of my subordinates in a span of ten minutes. Eh, that's fine. It's not like I haven't burned bridges before.

Not even bridges, more like I've broken open entire dikes. If worst comes to worst, this's nothing more than burning my tongue on some hot coffee.


	6. January 8th, 2014

After the whole shit yesterday that went down, I took time to ask Ooyodo what the girls were thinking that night, after she was done with the daily stuff she does with secretary stuff everyday since she got here, which was like two days ago.

Ooyodo said that it was a good thing that I decided to go talk to 'em, 'cause now apparently they don't really see me as this completely robotic, inhuman drill sergeant anymore. I had convinced them enough that I actually had a chance of being a good person, and that more importantly, they understood that there was a lot goin' on for me as well that they couldn't necessarily see. But at the same time, Ooyodo made sure to add, I really needed to change my drilling methods. It's clear as motherfucking glass that these girls won't handle the same kind of drilling that I would normally give new recruits in the army or the navy. Even I know that.

So I agreed to lessen the intensity of the drills, which made Ooyodo look like she hadn't felt that relieved in years - though I have no idea exactly how old they are to begin with. Ooyodo said that she would go and inform the girls right away, but I told her not to, that I'd tell them up front. It's my responsibility after all. Somehow, it doesn't feel right havin' Ooyodo go tell them something like that. Something like this I should say myself.

After that, I guess I looked stressed to Ooyodo, 'cause she immediately started apologizing profusely for all the shit that's been happening. I asked her why she was apologizing. Like, it's not like _she's _the one responsible for all this crap. Arguably, it's my fault, all my fault. (This wouldn't be the first, nor the last, time that the fault would be entirely mine...) Ooyodo said that she needed to apologize because...well, I'm pissed off. If the superior's angry, if the man who gives her orders is gettin' mad, somebody has to apologize, right? Someone's gotta apologize to rectify whatever's been done injustice, even if the one apologizing isn't necessarily the one who's responsible for the wrongdoing.

I just laughed right her face.

That shocked Ooyodo even more. I made sure my laugh would intentionally sound obnoxious and blatantly rude, and man oh man, did Ooyodo get it. She clearly didn't know why I was laughing, though.

I asked her if it was, y'know, like a Japanese thing to do that, to apologize in a situation where you didn't do anything yourself but something was going wrong. She said that while it wasn't necessarily a Japanese thing to do, she just felt like _somebody _had to apologize. So then I asked her, even if she herself didn't do anything wrong or was directly responsible for anything? And she just stands there, noddin'.

So then I laugh some more, and Ooyodo just keeps standin' there, not knowin' what the goddamn fuck is wrong with me.

I had to explain to her that in America where I come from, when someone makes a mistake and it's obvious who's made the mistake, we expect that person who's made that mistake to be the one responsible for providing an apology. Maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's a personal thing that only I really believe in, but whatever the case, I'm the only American here so it ain't like I'm about to find out whether it's cultural or just something that I think. I told Ooyodo that Americans generally don't like apologizing, that apologizing is seen as something only weak people do, or people who want to suck other people's dicks and earn people's pity do. Or what people who do stupid shit need to do but almost never do, there's that, too.

Ooyodo then asked me if I didn't want her to apologize so "needlessly" then, seeing that it seemed like I didn't like her apologizing. I told her that while I didn't really have a strong opinion on it, I said that I'd apologize personally whenever the situation warrants one from me because of what I did. And because I've made some of my ship girls cry, I'll apologize for it, simple as that. And hopefully make it up to them somehow.

I did mention, though, that I'm still pretty stressed out, not necessarily because of the initial grindin' of gears that's been going on between me and the ship girls, but just the usual stresses of traveling around and having to be busy with shit. I also said that the nerves of just being in a whole new place was nerve-racking as fuck. Ooyodo said that she and Akashi were a bit on the defense themselves about what their commander would be like. Ooyodo said that she was thankful that I turned out to be a nice guy.

If only she knew what I've done throughout my career. I don't think anyone would wanna ever give me the privilege of being called a "nice guy".

What is a "nice guy" anyway? Nothin' but a miserable pile 'a fake stories 'n bullshit ideals.

'Nuff 'a that, have at you!

Enough obscure references.

Afterwards, as Ooyodo was out there conducting drills with the girls, I brought the stereo system that I brought with me with my shit and started installing them into my office. I had to first install some metal holders that'll hold the stereos up into the walls so that they'd provide good surround sound, so I went over to Akashi and borrowed some of her tools to get the job done. She asked me what I wanted to use them for, and when I told her, Akashi seemed really surprised. She said that she didn't expect me to actually know how to use tools like them, which, to me, is completely fuckin' ridiculous. Like, who _doesn't _know how to use a tool as simple as an electric hand drill? Like, seriously, how _don't_ you know how to use that fucking thing? But unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to get the stereos fully installed, but I did manage to finish the drilling of the metal holders in place before I had to head out.

So my drills began for the ship girls. Murakumo was still here with us, so I can assume she's taken my words to heart and has decided to give me a second chance. That's what I interpret it as, anyway. Before starting, I cleared my throat, all awkward and shit, and announced that I would not drill them so harshly, that I would take into consideration that they were girls too, not just ship girls, if that makes sense. They immediately all looked relieved as fuck, just like how Ooyodo reacted when I told her my decision to stop drilling the girls so toughly. That being said, however, I told them that I still expected them to put their all into the drills, that I expected them to become no less disciplined soldiers that I've produced before. Everyone cheered, so I promised them that I'd make dinner for tonight, which surprised them. Inazuma said that it wouldn't be necessary, but I said that I'd do it anyway, Admiral's orders, you know.

I had thought about what I'd have to do in order to make my drills more bearable for the ship girls, so I decided to lay off the whole up-in-your-fucking-face tactics, the "GET UP SOLDIER! YOU THINK THIS'S TOUGH? YOU THINK THIS SHIT'S TIRING WHEN HUMANS CAN MARCH LONGER THAN YOU CAN!?" kinda shit and just stick to the basics. Just stick to the basics, don't do anythin' else unnecessary, so I did that, and it worked. The girls didn't cry, they did what I asked obediently and promptly. Maybe it's 'cause they knew what I'd be like if they pissed me off and didn't follow my orders, or maybe that's how they would've acted whether or not I drilled them like this the entire time. But I'm just glad no one's had to break down into a miserable pile of bawlin' fits. Even though, admittedly, it was tough for _me_, because I'm so fuckin' used to my usual way of always havin' to yell at the guys I'm drilling.

I think it's because most of the time, whenever I start drilling a fresh new batch of recruits, they're almost always rowdy and never wanting to follow orders, so I gotta beat that shit into their fucking brains in order to get anywhere near a good start to actually drilling them. These girls already know that they need to follow orders, so doing that kinda stuff is just overkill. I guess this is all my fault this time around. Oh well...I've made worse and more permanent mistakes before.

At least no one seems to be hating me for fucking ever for making an honest mistake.

So as promised, I made dinner for everyone that night, which turned out to be some quick naval curry that I used to make routinely in the Navy while I served on the _George Washington_. I thought they'd hate it, 'cause the whole promise of making them dinner was just a whimsical one that I just thought up on the spot, and I was like, shit, I didn't think this through all the way. So I made curry with whatever ingredients that I had at my disposal...which wasn't much, mind you.

They all fucking loved it. Everyone, even Error,_** WHO FUCKING FED BATSUBYOU THE MOTHERFUCKING CAT THAT CURRY, **_loved it.

That blows my mind. My brains were literally all over the kitchen floor and the walls, and I had to fucking scoop them up with a goddamn spatula.

_They loved it?_

**_They fucking loved it? What kind of a world am I living in right now, where my SHITTY NAVAL CURRY is ACTUALLY APPRECIATED! ? ! ? ! ! ? ! ? ! ? !_**

AND THE WORST PART IS? THE WORST PART IS?

_**THEY WANT ME TO MAKE THEM DINNER FOR THE ENTIRE REST OF THE FUCKING WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK**_

I'm done. I'm so fucking done. I'm in a state of utter confusion, no, not even that, I'm going through an identity crisis right now. These girls who have NO FUCKING REASON to like me or my cooking are all out of their damn minds asking me to make them that exact same curry for them _for an entire week straight_. I don't even know whether it's more appropriate to stick a knife down my throat because I don't want to have to force anyone to go through that kind of torture of eating my naval curry for a week straight or if it's more appropriate to act genuinely surprised that people actually like that shit.

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I intentionally whipped up some shitpot for them to eat, but the way they reacted to it was like, shit, what the hell did I just do _right?_ I just - I just don't fucking get it. I didn't _accidentally _slip some hallucinogens in the curry, did I? Uhhhhh...well, welp, guys, in case the MP come along 'n court-martial my ass to hell and back for "intentionally" drugging their ship girls, you'll know what happened. It's all written right here. Thank God I decided to keep a motherfucking journal, right? RIGHT? _RIGHT?_

I installed the rest of the stereos just before coming to my room and writing this journal. I just wanna go to sleep, I don't even know what to think anymore when people think my curry's the best shit they've ever eaten. I think I'll just go to sleep and all of tonight's just gonna be this convenient dream...


	7. January 9th, 2014

January 9th, 2014

I forgot to put the date on the previous entry. Oh well.

Ooyodo seemed like she still can't get over the fact that I handle all the paperwork without really needing her help. This morning, the fax machine was churning out paper after paper, report after report for me to read and analyze and do whatever the crap I needed to do. Ooyodo kept looking at the fax machine, like she was nonverbally begging it to stop. I asked her why she kept glancing at the fax machine, and she said that I might get pissed off at so much damn paperwork. I just laughed at her again. I told her that paperwork was the easiest shit that a naval officer had to do. It might be boring to some, yeah, pencil pushing and all that, but personally, I don't care. I don't mind pencil pushing at all. Part of it's because some of these reports and papers are actually pretty important, as most of them that I got today was regarding logistics and supplies that we would need later for the ship girls' drills and whatnot.

The other part of the reason's that if I'm pushing pencils all day, that means I'm not out in the field fighting and killing people and watching people die.

I noticed that Error's having a bit of trouble with Batsubyou the cat lately. Maybe the cat doesn't like her. At one point this morning, Batsubyou ran over to my desk and curled up at my feet. Error looked devastated as fuck. I tried to nudge the cat over so that Error can pick her up again, but Batsubyou stared at me, like she was telling me "The fuck are _you _doin', bitch?"

I placed an order for catnip on the supply request return report and told Ooyodo to fax it back to headquarters in Tokyo. Hopefully that catnip'll come in tomorrow.

Error ended up sulking around the base for the rest of the day. I didn't tell her about the catnip. I like the idea of surprises, you know? So I'm really hoping that catnip comes in tomorrow. I'm not really in the mood to look forward to dealing with one of my secretaries sulking around giving everyone dirty looks just because her cat isn't particularly friendly with her anymore. I didn't feel like telling her that she ought not to hold Batsubyou like she normally does all the time.

Oh, shit, a cat doesn't like to be held up by its front legs up in the air? You don't say, huh...

Pretty sure if Error reads this, she's gonna pluck my eyeballs out or something. I don't know what she'll do.

After paperwork and reports and shit, I decided to break out the pistol I brought with me to Okinawa for some target practice. I need to keep my marksmanship on point, after all - can't use the excuse of being assigned to a foreign deployment to let my marksmanship tank like a bitch.

It's not a flashy pistol or anything. It's just a simple Beretta M-9, the standard issue of pistols back when I was in college at Hargrave. My own drilling instructor let me keep it because back then, I was a crackshot with it, best in my class for pistol accuracy, even though it's technically not allowed for officers in training to keep issued firearms. I guess those three back to back 50-meter pistol marksmanship championships actually meant something after all, looking back. But that was like two years ago. Two years is a long time, at least it is for me. That's a full ten percent of my lifetime. Shit can change real quick in two years.

I used the empty fuel barrels for target practice, the ones that looked like they were the most badly damaged or in the worst conditions. I don't have much ammo, only the three magazines that were already inside the pistol case, but I've placed an order this morning for more 9mm. Thankfully, I still know how to shoot.

Then again, seeing the deployments I've already been on and considering the times when I've had to shoot that pistol, why would I ever think my accuracy would get any worse?

Fifteen rounds. Full metal jacket. One precious magazine, two remaining.

Reminds me of the time when I had to be deployed to Baghdad, when I only had two mags in my M4 remaining, and we were gettin' swarmed by insurgents.

It's best not to think about those times now.

Fubuki came to watch me practice-fire onto those fuel barrels out in the pier. She asked me why I put the fuel barrels so far out in the pier, and I told her that it's to prevent any stray bullet from ricocheting from the barrels back into the base and accidentally hit someone. She then asked me why I was using fuel barrels as practice targets if that was my concern, and I told her that if she could find me something better to use as a target, I'd be more than happy to replace those barrels.

She asked me if she could shoot my pistol once. When I asked her why, she immediately apologized and tried to run away - I'm not kidding, she looked like she was about to run away - but I called out to her to have her stop. I asked her why she was trying to run away, and she said it's because she asked something that she shouldn't have ever asked, which was to ask a superior officer if she could handle his firearm. I'd imagine that's against standard Japanese military protocol, but like I could give two shits about that. According to the Moebius Four Armament agreements, the American officer sent to train the ship girls, me, is exempt from Japanese military law, so as long as I'm not doing anything obviously criminal or my ship girls don't report me enough times to headquarters in Tokyo to warrant my arrest and/or removal, I can do whatever the fuck I want.

I repeated myself, asking her again why she wanted to shoot my pistol, and she said it's because she's always seen these kinds of personal firearms before when she was first constructed and was stationed over in the mainland and always wanted to try shooting one. So I reloaded a fresh mag for her and told her to shoot the entire mag so that I could see how good her accuracy was. Initially she just kinda stood there, like she wasn't sure if I was just being sarcastic and screwing around with her or if I was serious. I basically had to put the gun itself in her hands to make her realize I wasn't just bullshitting her, so she shot the mag out. Every single bullet she shot hit the exact same place on the barrel she shot at.

Turns out that's the first time she's ever shot anything.

Then again, in hindsight, now that I think about it, I suppose it makes sense. These ship girls aren't just normal humans, after all. They're the world's first artificial intelligence - human hybrids. Technically speaking, they're androids. But whoever worked on their behavioral and personality algorithms did a fucking fantastic job of it, since they sure as hell don't act like what we'd think of androids. Go up to some random guy off the street and introduce them to one of these ship girls and ask him if he thought they were androids, and he'd say no every single time. Unless he met Murakumo, then he'd find those floating head arrays fucking weird.

I asked her how her accuracy was practically 100% even though that was the first time she's ever shot anything. Fubuki explained that all the ship girls, including Samidare, Murakumo, Inazuma, and Sazanami, everyone, basically, were loaded with targeting programs for their ship guns. The programs are also apparently able to be transcribed and edited to assist with their accuracy while using personal firearms. So if I'm getting this right, it's basically like the girls knowing how to shoot a gun without ever seeing one. I guess that's why Fubuki was itching to shoot my pistol. I mean, I can understand. If you have this spontaneous knowledge of how to do something but you've never had the chance to actually put that knowledge to use, I can see why it can bother people.

I asked Fubuki if I could inject a program like that into my own brain so that I'd always have perfect accuracy with my own shot, but Fubuki said that an operation like that would kill an ordinary human like me. Well, there goes my chance of being the world's greatest sharpshooter. Not that I gave a damn.

After drills, I went to my office again to take care of the afternoon paperwork that Ooyodo put on my desk from the fax machine while I was out drilling the ship girls, but my attacks came again.

What I mean by "attacks" is that I have this weird fucking thing about me that causes me to get all drowsy and sometimes fall asleep during times when either it doesn't make any physical sense that I'd be falling asleep or when I really shouldn't be falling asleep. It's gotten me into a lot of trouble before, making people think that I was falling asleep during class or during conferences because I was bored, which isn't the case at all. I've had this condition since I was in middle school, starting in eighth grade. I'd just find myself falling asleep during one particular class period, which, back then, was fourth period, right before lunch. It didn't help that my teacher back then always caught me falling asleep, and everyone would laugh at me. I have no idea what it is. My parents know about it 'cause I've told them about it before, but they just pass it off as me not eating enough or something, so I have no idea whether it's a medical condition or a physiological condition or whatever fucking condition it might be. It could be anemia, narcolepsy, whatever. But as it stands, ever since eighth grade, my brain randomly chooses a time during the middle of the day to shut itself off and make me to go sleep. It only does this when I'm sitting down, mainly when I'm sitting for a lecture or conference or doing paperwork or homework like this, but it's fucking annoying. I've eaten well, I've slept well, I've done everything I could before to see if doing those things would make it go away, but I'd still find myself with my head on my arms on my desk, wondering why the hell the clock reads eight thirty at night when just a second ago it said five thirty.

That being explained, I had another attack this afternoon. By this point, I'm already well aware of this "condition", so as soon as my head starts to bob up and down and my vision becomes blurry, I know it's starting to act up. The best way to stave it off, I've found, is to get up and walk around, but there's two problems with that: after I come back and sit back down, my brain feels like a 7-11 Slurpiee that's been sitting out in the sun for an hour, and the second and harder problem's that once the attack starts, it's the most fucking difficult thing to just get up in the first place. It's like my legs become superglue, stuck to the ground like a goddamn statue.

The freakiest part of the attack is that because I'm trying to fight against it, my eyes start to shake, like I'm having a seizure or suffering a panic attack or something. So if you were to see me going through a sleep attack, I'd be sitting at my desk, maybe with one of my hands on my cheek or something, looking down at my desk, and my eyes trembling harder than a phone on vibrate.

You can imagine what Ooyodo was thinking when she saw me having a sleep attack for the first time. Poor Ooyodo...she tried to give me CPR because she thought I was suffocating or hyperventilating or some shit, and thankfully her doing that woke me up and caused the attack to stop.

I had to explain all that to her, saying that it wasn't anything life threatening or something like that, just something weird that's been with me for a long time. She didn't look like she wanted to believe me, like she was convinced that I was about to fall over dead within a matter of minutes. She asked if I was sure about it, if I wanted any medical help, that she'd send for a helicopter that would fly me over to the nearest military hospital within ten minutes. I told her to calm down.

It took some time for her to get her nerves back, but I've got this feeling that she feels a sorta responsibility to be in charge of my health. Earlier tonight after cooking everyone my naval curry again, after I retired to my room for the night, I thought I heard someone walking by my room at least four times an hour. If I wait a little longer, those footsteps'll probably come back.

Damn...and I went for so long without having an attack like that. Looks like my streak's been broken.


	8. January 10th, 2014

January 10, 2014.

I found a piano in the back of the warehouse as I was helping Akashi take inventory. She said I didn't really need to be there to help her, that she could do it on her own, but when it comes to supplies and logistics, I'm a total control freak. I _absolutely _need to know what's what, how much of what we have, how much of it's coming in, and when it's coming in - which I explained to Akashi.

She asked me if that was just how I was, so I told her the story.

During the Third Gulf War, I was commanding the U.S.S. _George Washington_ just off the coast of Israel. Israel had given America permission to launch offensives from their soil to fight ISIS, which was starting to take over the entirety of the Middle Eastern area and invading neutral countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and other such sovereignties, so we were sent in to deal with them. ISIS knew this. They knew Israel was letting us use their bases, go through their territory, so they surprise-bombed our troop movement through Israel as soon as we exited Israel-controlled ground. We had lots of guys out there pinned down, so I had to send out helis from the _George Washington _in order to get supplies there until our boys in the air could clear out the enemies swarming to the Israeli front.

Somehow, they also had some sort of makeshift airforce of a couple of fighter jets that we didn't expect them to have, and they attacked my ship. I was below decks at the time, and the bombs basically destroyed all of the exits from the decks and trapped everyone below decks in for four days before other guys broke us out. Long story short, it was during that time when I developed my control-freak nature of knowing exactly how many supplies we have and planning out exactly what was to be done with them.

Akashi asked me if I thought I would die during that time, because the way I described it certainly made it sound like it was a terrifying experience. In hindsight, I told her, it wasn't really that frightening. I mean, all things considered, because we were beneath decks, the carrier was strong enough to protect us from further enemy airstrikes, so it wasn't like we were going to get shelled to death. But I'd read survival novels, watched movies and played games in which survival is a major topic and concern. I've heard about the stories that tell of people who're stuck in places with limited resources and need to wait to get help because they can't break out on their own. I've watched Angel Beats, for God's sake. While I've gotten over it since then, at the time, I was nervous and scared shitless to the point where I still have a bit of trauma in regards to keeping track of supplies.

I told Akashi that had I not developed that sense of carefully managing our supplies during that four-day imprisonment in my own ship, my crew and I probably would've had a much rougher time than we did. But at the same time, I told Akashi that I wasn't trying to credit our survival entirely to my own ability. It was only something that come forth out of basic survival necessity.

Basically, I told Akashi that I only did it because I was a scared little bitch on the inside.

Which is completely ridiculous, because I train my soldiers to be unafraid of death or getting injured. I'm a soldier - a bullet's bound to come your way someday. If not a bullet, something else that can kill you just as easily - or just as slowly. But that being said, I also need to point out that I train soldiers - and myself - to be unafraid of getting shot or shelled or beaten to death, not starving to death.

I train people to be unafraid of dying heroic, bloody deaths, "honorable" deaths, if you will - not of horrific, slow, and mind-numbing deaths.

Akashi was a bit quiet after that. After we were done taking inventory, she finally asked me if I thought I was gonna die at any point during those four days we were trapped below decks. I said that if I were to tell her no, I'd be the worst liar in the world.

Akashi was surprised. She told me that I was quite the character in two ways: first, she explained to me that in Japanese culture, appearance is a lot more important than reality, a concept called "tatamae", which I vaguely remember in my Japanese classes way back when. Here in Japan, apparently, you do whatever the fuck you can to put on a facade of politeness, pretend that everything's okay no matter what the personal cost or what you might wanna do or say. Second, she said that even though I was American, I didn't act "American". I asked her what she meant by that, and she said I didn't really act like what Japanese people thought Americans would act like. Or, in other words, I wasn't conforming to the whole foreigner stereotype of the loud, bumbling, overconfident, and typically ignorant and stupid American. She said that when she asked me if I was scared of dying back then, she thought I'd answer all like "Of fucking course I knew I was gonna survive, what're you talking about? I'm American!" or something like that.

I asked Akashi if she thought that I was a loud, bumbling, overconfident, ignorant, stupid and rude American all along, and she quickly denied thinking any such thought. Figures.

So then Akashi and I spent some time talking about cross cultural stuff, since we got ourselves into the topic. One of the things I remember talking about was how I didn't like the whole tatamae thing, that I thought it was bullshit that Japanese society emphasizes superfluousness and shallowness like that just for the sake of politeness. Akashi said that it's because Japanese people generally avoid insulting people at whatever cost, which I guess I can understand, but still, that's bullshit. I'm not saying politeness is bad or that people ought to go around insulting everyone, but I like keeping shit real. I believe in the fact that if you have to get a point across or the situation calls for directness and ain't got time or room for bullshit like politeness, you gotta do what you gotta do. If I gotta slap a bitch or tell an asshole that I'm tired of his shit, then I will. You bet your ass I will. I guess I'm a true American in that respect, but obviously I'm not going to be rude when clearly I don't need to be.

I also remember telling Akashi that having stereotypical beliefs or views about other people wasn't good. I remember when I was going through that stage in middle and high school, when I first started developing my own views and opinions on stuff like this. I bought into stereotypes myself. I thought the Asians were all smart and math geniuses and cared for nothing but acing every single goddamn class and fill up our Valedictorian rows at graduation. I'd pull my eyes to go all squinty whenever I wanted to piss off an Asian guy, which admittedly didn't work all the time because they wouldn't get the whole stereotype about Asians having narrow eyes and just look at me weird, like dude, what the fuck are you doing. And a lot others besides ones about Asians.

But the military changed me. Once I went through ROTC and went to Hargrave (mainly 'cause my parents got me in through connections, thanks nepotism!), I had to force myself to ditch stereotypes and generalizations and all that. I had to work with Asians, bunk with blacks in the same room and dorm, drill with Latinos, shoot with whites, whatever. Lots of times, they'd fly in foreign task forces to train and drill us too. We had this Russian Spetznaz officer fly over to drill us - that was fucking hellish - for a week one time, then we had a Peruvian paratrooper veteran show us the ropes of basic paratrooping. Case in point, in the military, there just is no goddamn room for racial stereotyping.

If you have to train your ass off with the belief that the guy you're working next to just might be the guy who'll save your life out in the field, you tend not to stereotype him. That's just the truth.

Akashi was super intrigued by my stories. She said that everything that I went through, those kinds of stories I told, sounded like a lot of fun, with the disclaimer that obviously it must've been tough on me. She told me that she and the rest of the ship girls, including Ooyodo, only worked with the Japanese military since their construction. They didn't really get a chance to work with foreigners or meet other kinds of people. That's why the ship girls were nervous about being transferred to Okinawa, and that's why Akashi herself was really looking forward to being transferred, because she wanted to see what it was like working with me, an American. She wanted to see how differently I managed things, what I did to make shit work, so to speak. Just being able to talk with me like this wasn't something that was feasible or even imaginable back on the mainland, she said. Having a casual conversation with her superior officer while her officer was still in full uniform and on duty? Impossible. That's not being professional, you can't have conversations like that. But because I'm American, because I'm the one in charge of this base, and because we're away from the scrutinizing eyes of the Japanese military command and government, something like chatting with me is entirely possible. Akashi said that something so simple as talking to somebody else was an eye-opening experience.

It made me realize that just maybe, these girls don't have a lot of outside world experience. The way that Akashi was talking, to me, it really sounds as though none of the girls really know a whole lot about the world, about people, maybe even about themselves. Now that I think about it, it's like...how should I say this, it's like these girls are like...like babies, or tabula rasa, like Lock (Loch? forgot his name) said, whoever that Enlightenment philosopher dude was. Blank slates with not much on them, only just learning about the world. I ought'a go ask them how old they are. Maybe if I know that, maybe thinking of them as blank slates isn't so out of the picture.

This's something, now that I realized, that I'd never expect to think once I got here. I came here thinking that I'd be the one being taught new things about Japan and Japanese culture and language. Now, it doesn't really seem that way entirely. It seems like I can teach the girls here a thing or two about America...maybe about me, too, besides just drilling and giving them orders and teaching naval strategy and whatnot.

Then the question now is, do I _want _to teach them about myself? Do _I _wanna teach them at all? No offense against any of them, but the ship girls couldn't handle my drilling before I had to take out the harshest parts. So what is there that'll tell me that the same girls will handle the shit that I've gone through if I tell them about it?

I guess the best answer is just to wait for them to come to me first and ask.


	9. January 11th, 2014

January 11th, 2014.

I completely forgot about that piano that we found yesterday in one of the warehouses when Akashi and I were back there taking inventory. I guess talking with her kinda engrossed me a bit too much, but it's a mistake I don't mind making.

If you've ever taken some time to think about it, you come to realize just how wonderful of a feeling it is to make a mistake, and know that there's absolutely nothing that'll go wrong because of it. Too often in this world, if I make a mistake, tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people will die as a direct result. And it doesn't matter what kind of mistake - a mistake of ignorance, a mistake of carelessness, a mistake that you make that you couldn't have avoided making - and before you know it, the blood of innocents is poured on you.

If it were a blatant mistake of malicious intent, then that's deserved. Too often, though, that's not the case at all.

Back on track before I get all melancholy on myself again. I moved the piano over to my office so that I can play it whenever there's nothing to do and I don't feel like surfing the web on my laptop or something like that. Luckily, it's not like a grand piano or anything, it's a small wooden piano that's badly in need of tuning and other such maintenance. Samidare saw me pushing the piano on its creaky old little wheels across the dock and asked me what I was doing, so I told her. She offered to help, which I gladly accepted, and much to my shock, Samidare just picked up the entire fucking piano and carried the damn thing over her shoulder all the way to the office, where she rolled it in from there.

I mean, I know I shouldn't be surprised, but still, I bet you'd freak the fuck out if you saw a high school freshman girl pick up something as heavy as a piano like she were picking up a small box of school supplies.

I had Samidare place the piano against the wall, to the right of my desk where I sit. We got some wet towels to wipe all the dust and shit off the piano, and when we opened the top to check the condition of the strings inside, we found a den of rats inside, along with lots of decaying foliage and other gunk. The rats weren't very pleased that we were carrying around their entire home, and Samidare wasn't too thrilled to see them either, 'cause when the rats looked up at her, she put her hands over her mouth to keep herself from screaming out loud and just backed away quickly.

Samidare is afraid of rats. You learn something new every day.

As the rats screeched at me to go the fuck away, I poked around the piano a bit and found out that behind the piano, there's a hole that got chewed through so that the rats could access the inside of the piano through there. I don't know how old the piano is, but it's old enough to have its wood brittle and soft enough for rats to chew through pretty easily, I'd imagine. The hole's really high up from the ground, so I'd imagine that the rats had like some sort of pedestal to reach up there. Whatever the case, I asked Samidare to help me take the rats somewhere else, but that was a bad mistake, 'cause she just ran outta my office as soon as I asked. Murakumo came storming into my office, and Ooyodo, who'd been away taking care of the supplies they helied in for this morning, came in quickly too, worried about what was going on. Murakumo thought that I was bullying or harassing Samidare by her frantic behavior, so I had to explain to them about the rats and everything.

Murakumo and Ooyodo relocated the rats' nest somewhere else. Outside of the base, there's a small forest, so they placed them over there while I cleaned out the inside of the piano. Samidare calmed down after the rats were taken away, so I asked her why she was so afraid of rats. I mean, ship girls don't get sick at all, they only get tired or exhausted, so it's unreasonable for her to be afraid of them. Samidare said she didn't know why, she was just afraid of them.

Unreasonable fear, huh. Paranoia, fear, worry, concern, uncertainty. I remember when I had them too. Fearful of things I shouldn't be fearful of, or being afraid of things that aren't likely to happen. I know a lot of guys who went back home with some sorta PTSD, some sort of shock trauma from war, from seeing shit that humans aren't meant to see. Fear is hard to get over, and it's clear as day if you take a look at any of them. It's not something you can just sit by a fireside and say all casual and shit with a long cigarette in your mouth and having your voice projected to millions across the country.

Fear is powerful, but only if you let it.

I guess I'm the odd one out in this. The military changed me to have no fear...but in the back of my head, I always find myself second-guessing myself. It's what I'd like to think, but do I _really _think I know what fear is? Do I _really _think I have the power to never be afraid? It's mighty convenient to think so. I've seen just as much shit as everyone else. I've seen a man's head explode when a fifty cal bullet goes through it. It shakes you right to the core, but I bounced back from it so that the next time I see someone's leg get blown off by an IED, it ain't so bad.

But is that strength and a defense from fear? Or is that simply desensitization?

It's hard to tell sometimes. Like, sometimes, I ask myself,

_Do _I know fear?

_Do _I know what fear isn't?

Like I said, it's really hard to tell, and it's because you're never sure if you're going to think of something even scarier than what you already know.

I'm ranting again. Not good.

Anyway, I tried to do some manual tuning myself, but I'm no virtuoso, so I'm gonna have to call in someone to fix the piano. Made sure to email someone over at headquarters regarding the issue, so hopefully they don't think that it's something that they can just toss off as some bullshit request and send someone over.

When Murakumo and Ooyodo came back, they asked me why I put a piano in my office, and I just told them that I wanted it there in case I was bored and felt like playing. They asked me if I even knew how to play the piano, and I told them I knew a little bit, enough to know a piece from Chopin and Bach or two. Ooyodo seemed really excited and asked me to play as soon as the piano gets tuned - turns out she's a big fan of orchestral music and stuff like that. I can imagine that, actually, that doesn't come off as a huge surprise.

She suggested that I hold a concert for the ship girls, but then I asked her about the kind of instrument I ought to play for said concert. So they asked me what kinds of instruments I knew how to play, and I just said piano and guitar. My mom forced me to learn piano from like, third grade I think it was, and I completed the Certificate of Merit in tenth grade. No shortage of piano recitals and stuff, I remember all those...memories I wish I didn't have, I embarrassed myself so badly during those days. Didn't help that I had some stage fright when I was a kid.

I learned guitar back at Hargrave and during my time in the navy. Someone in my dorm back at Hargrave had brought a banjo from home, so every Saturday night he'd bust it out and we'd build a small fire and make s'mores and sing army songs. I fiddled around with the guy's banjo with some permission, so I got the hang of it a little bit. Then when I joined the navy, some of my sailors aboard the _Bunker Hill_ were playing the guitar one night out on patrol, so I joined in with them and had them teach me the strings. But other than that, I don't know much else.

Tonight at dinner, I chewed the inside of my lower lip in the same place three times in a row. It still fucking hurts - I can taste a bit of blood even now as I'm writing this. Normally I chew my lip while eating maybe once very month, every other month, something like that, but I've never chewed the same place _three times in a row._ Unbelievable...and from past experience, that'll stay a callous spot in my lip and annoy the hell outta me for the next two or three weeks, I can feel it.

So the reason why that's relevant's 'cause when I chewed my lip for a third time in a row, I swore out loud in Japanese. I dunno why - normally if I wanna cuss, I'll do it in English. But I suppose being around Japanese ship girls who all speak Japanese and compel me to speak as much as I can in Japanese too, I just kinda fell into it. Well, I guess it's good in the sense that it's a sign that my mind's starting to take Japanese speaking as second nature, which's what I want, seeing that I'll have to stay here for at least a couple years, but at the same time, it made Inazuma get on my case.

Inazuma told me that she didn't want me to swear if I could help it. She said that she'd been around a lot of other officers in the mainland who did nothing but smoke cigarettes and swear all day long, so she grew to dislike both of those things a lot. She doesn't have to worry about me smoking - I tried it once in the navy, one of my sailors offered me a cigarette once, but I didn't like it. My lungs and my nose really hate the smoke that comes outta that kinda crap. But I do have a bad habit of swearing a lot, and I know it myself. It's probably pretty fucking obvious throughout the journal - heh, irony.

So I guess I need to keep in mind not to swear when Inazuma's around. Or, you know, I could just try not to swear in general. I mean, it's not impossible, but...I get the feeling that Bush being considered a better president than he was is more likely to happen than me stopping my swearing. 'Murica, am I right. I guess it's thanks to him that I'm where I am now. Big fat fuckin' thanks...

Which reminds me, Samidare asked if I could get us a tea set so that she could serve me tea. I've gotta remember putting in the request order for it tomorrow. Hopefully I don't forget, and if I do, which I'd expect to happen, hopefully she'll remind me.


	10. January 12th, 2014

January 12th, 2014.

Got a big surprise today.

The supplies that were scheduled to come in this morning came by ship - well, technically, helis chopped in from the J.D.S. _Hyuuga_. Two MV-22 Ospreys landed in the chopper landing area of the base that I like to call the Six Pack, since there's six white circles denominating the landing zones of the helis that, if you look at it from above, it sorta looks like a six pack of beer. Anyway, they came in and dropped off a _ton _of stuff - shells, ammo, food, miscellaneous stuff, supplies we'd need to live and drill and whatever.

They also brought in new ship girls - Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou. I'll talk about them later.

When I went out to greet the Ospreys and supervise the unloading of the cargo, to my huge surprise, Captain Liu came out of one of the Ospreys to see me. He's one of the American spec-ops guys assigned to work on the Moebius Four Armament project - I think he got transferred from Seal Team 6, that enigmatic special forces squad that no one knows what the hell they do or _can _do. We met briefly before I got deployed here at D.C., when he debriefed me on what I needed to expect and do and all that shit - stuff. Ah, forget it, too lazy to erase. He's a chill guy, a really cool dude. He was the one who told me that if there was anything I ever needed, all I'd have to do is email or dial the headquarters up in Tokyo for it and I'd expect it within a week.

He told me that the supplies had come in like this just for today - it wasn't going to be like this all the time. Apparently the J.D.S. _Hyuuga_'s going through some training ops with newly inducted servicemen, and because it was going to operate around the Okinawa area, HQ figured that they may was well delay shipment of some of our supplies and group 'em together and dump it onto the _Hyuuga _and let the training pilots ferry 'em over. Explains why I haven't seen that catnip which I ordered a few days ago until this morning. But I can't blame HQ just for trying to be economical, I'd've made the same decision.

I asked Captain Liu why they let the training guys go around using the _Hyuuga_ - like, there are specific auxiliary and training ships in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force built specifically for training ops and regimens, but Liu said that this training course was specifically designed to help pilots get acclimated to working with helicopter destroyers, which I forgot the _Hyuuga _was. Makes sense if you think of it that way. How often does a navy have a training ship that's a helicopter destroyer? Probably not too many.

He didn't stay for too long - probably long enough to make sure all the cargo was tagged, registered, and confirmed delivered. Usually the processing takes around half an hour to an hour, depending on the amount of supplies delivered on that day and taking into consideration how long it's taken before. But he gave me a file with more instructions and updates to my objectives and orders and also gave me the slip that I should expect the arrival of more ship girls to the base soon.

Liu also asked me if I was enjoying my time here, which was an interesting question at the time since I didn't know how exactly I would answer that. I paused for a bit, thinking about what I would say, and he just grinned at me and told me that I didn't have to answer if I didn't have one. I ended up saying that I wasn't sure. I told him that there'd been problems between me and the girls, but for the most part they've been resolved. I told him that I wasn't really sure if everything would work out, if I was the right guy for the job. Not because I didn't want to be here, but because I'm basically entering an unknown chapter of modern naval warfare. There's nothing that I can use as a reference to know if I'm doing a good job or doing things correctly or not.

Liu told me to man the fuck up and deal with it.

If I'm a soldier, as my position in the navy would imply, then I would know how to deal with a new environment and a difficult situation. It's not like I've got bullets pinging all around me and snapping over my head or anything, and that by itself makes me automatically better off than over half the US Army.

I mean, he's got a point. I can't argue against that, much less against someone who ranks higher than me. But just like what I said about fear earlier, it's not something you shake off so easily.

I watched him take off in one of the pair of the Ospreys back to the _Hyuuga, _which I realized I could see from the Six Pack just a bit. Not much, but it was out there...maybe about five or ten miles out or so, God, I suck at estimating distances, which, for a naval officer like me, is really, really bad. Makes me wonder how I even became a naval officer in the first place. +1 to the American military chain of command, hoo-rah mothafucka.

Anyways, Ooyodo and Akashi, who came out with me to see in the supplies, introduced me to the new ship girls I mentioned earlier.

Mamiya (間宮) and Irako (伊良湖) are apparently both supply ships, so I guess them wearing white kitchen aprons makes a lot of sense. Mamiya just looks like the paradigm of a Japanese housewife. What's the term that they use for the ideal Japanese woman again? Something something nadeshiko, I'm forgetting the first half. But yeah, I mean, looking at her, just by _looking_ at her, you can tell that if anything household-related needs to get done, she's the one to call. She said that she and Irako would take care of all the cleaning, cooking, whatever, so I mean I guess I can rely on them. Irako looks more like the big sister-type, mainly because her face looks teenager-ish, while Mamiya has that dignified, mature air of a housewife. I dunno, it's hard to explain unless you've met people like that. The other ship girls all seemed super happy to see them, 'cause as soon as we went back inside and called out to the ship girls to meet their new comrades, Sazanami practically dived straight into Irako, and the other girls did similar stuff.

They say an army runs on its stomach. So would it be accurate to say that ships float on food as well?

That's just weird.

I'm forgetting Houshou (鳳翔, Phoenix in Flight, a badass name again that doesn't fit her at all, like Fubuki). She's Like Mamiya, she gives off the whole mature housewifey vibe, but she's noticeably shorter than Mamiya. She's supposed to be an aircraft carrier, and Ooyodo had to explain to me that Houshou's the very first commissioned CVN, which I didn't know and made me very impressed. Houshou just chuckled and downplayed it, saying that it wasn't really worth mentioning or making a big deal about - well, I don't mean to stereotype the whole Japanese housewife image, but I wasn't really surprised by that.

What do they look like? Uh...where do I start...

_They're all fucking gorgeous._

Usually in America, when someone asks you to imagine an ordinary housewife, right, do you necessarily imagine "hot" or "gorgeous" as potential adjectives in the description box? Not really, no, unless you had a Sports Illustrated bikini model as a mom. So why did they turn out like _this?_

It's not that there's a problem with my coworkers and subordinates being hot and cute as hell. I guess I'm just way too used to working with and in the ugly side of everything. I mean, hell, that shouldn't really be all that surprising, considering I'm working in the military, and everyone in the military's bound to see or do something ugly. Breathing in fighter jet exhaust on aircraft carriers, holding meetings with petty officers who haven't showered in two weeks, getting bloodied casualties and bodies into stretchers, all that shit, it jades you, just makes you think "hey, well, just part 'a the job, just another day" when you see a leg bleeding on the ground, jagged bone and ripped blood vessels and all. So for me to work with these ship girls is...how should I say, _refreshing_.

It's like subconsciously, just by being around them and working with them and commanding them, they're making me slowly realize that there is a silver lining somewhere in the world after all.

Another thing is that because of how I was raised, I wasn't really all that close with my parents. Colonel and Lieutenant Colonel Kevinson were frequently on patrol or in some random military base doing whatever, and I wouldn't know what they were up to. They'd just...they were like ghosts, they would be there one day, and the house would be empty the next. I learned to make myself independent as a kid, doing shit like chores and grocery shopping by myself and stuff. The idea, or should I say concept, of "Mom" isn't quite as developed in my head as it would be for other people.

In other words, Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou present this foreign image that my brain isn't familiar with, and now, I'm having a lot of trouble accepting the fact that they're ship girls.

We just spent today helping them get their stuff moved into the dorms, and I cancelled drills for today to get our newcomers acquainted with the base. Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou ended up cooking a huge dinner for us tonight...which I sort of regret because I'm full as fuck.

It's already been over a week, but the arrival of Ooyodo, Error, and Akashi, and now Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou reminded me again that my life here's gonna change again and again every time we get more ship girls in here. I mean, I prided myself on being able to adapt to new situations on the fly.

But does that include meeting new people every week?

Fuck it, I'll just end it here...I need to sleep...


	11. January 13th, 2014

January 13th, 2014.

Start of a new week. Or, at the time I'm writing this, the end of the start of a new week.

As soon as I arrived at my office for the morning paperwork, I saw Error playing around with Batsubyou the cat. I had left the bag of catnip that came in yesterday with the rest of the supplies in front of her room, so it's good that she used it. Angry secretary girl avoided.

But now I have the problem of Error always looking away from me whenever I need to talk to her. It seems just because I bought her a bag of catnip, she seems to have taken a liking to me, or that's how I'll take it. I don't know how I should react to _her _reactions, and while I'm into anime and stuff, I'm no Keima Katsuragi who sits at home playing every single goddamn dating sim ever created. I just hope this stays like some sort of puppy love kinda thing, but I have no idea what's going to happen while I'm here.

I'm used to making my own coffee or tea and making my own breakfast in the morning, and so far, usually it's been like cereal, muffins, a sandwich, maybe a croissant sandwich if I'm feeling extra hungry. So imagine my surprise when I walk into the kitchen and find Mamiya and Irako already hard at work making breakfast and lunch for today. To make me feel even worse, they even gave me an American-style breakfast with scrambled eggs, four strips of bacon cooked with maple syrup, sausage links, and tater tots in a matter of minutes. I almost didn't even want to eat it because I didn't feel like I deserved their magnificent cooking skills - this morning's breakfast was possibly the best breakfast I've had since I learned what my taste buds exactly were. I tried to insist on making my own breakfast, but they said that if I did, there would be no point in having them work at my base, so I gave in.

It's so much different here interacting with these girls than, say, if I were at a typical American military base. Usually I'm used to dealing with people who either let you do whatever the hell you want and don't give a damn or they're difficult to work with because what they want directly conflicts with what you want. Here, the problem's that people want _me_ to get what I want, but the discrepancy lies in _how _I'll get what I want. Isn't that crazy? That's how polite my subordinates are - well, most of them, for the most part. I would've never imagined a base like this could exist, and it never ceases to blow my mind that I'm actually in charge of a base like this.

I guess if that's your problem, you have a lot of other things you need to be worried about first.

Okay, for the big news: at the end of this week, we're scheduled to receive even more naval personnel. I haven't been given names, but apparently we're to receive two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, a light carrier, a standard carrier, a battleship, and a submarine. In order to prepare, I was instructed by HQ to send the destroyers out on their first mission towards Sector B.

Sector B is the classified name we've given the area of Abyssal-infested waters. I can't disclose the exact location in case other unauthorized entities want to try to gain access to it for whatever reason, but that's what we're calling it.

Their objective is to patrol the perimeter of the outermost areas of Sector B and engage any squads of enemy vessels that show any sign of aggression towards them. I told the destroyers that this was strictly a reconnaissance mission, that their first priority was to gain information and above all keep themselves from getting into dangerous situations that would lead to any one of them sinking.

They left at 1400 hours this afternoon and returned at 21:00 hours successfully. I transmitted what information they scrounged up over to HQ and reported a successful mission.

Mamiya and Irako again whipped up another fantastic dinner for everyone when the destroyers returned in celebration of their first victory out at sea. They all seemed really proud of themselves. I am, too, but...something felt weird, sitting there in the mess hall with everyone. It's really eerie to think that my soldiers are these girls who look like they're middle schoolers or high school freshmen, and they're cheering because they've blown shit up. I know this is a constant thing I'm mentioning, but I just can't get used to it. It's nice to see them happy and celebrate their victories, but still, the fact that they're cheering because they've won a naval battle...

You know what, I just gotta shut up and deal with it. Yeah, normally it's grown-ass men who I see normally cheering when they shoot a helicopter out of the air with an AA-Stinger launcher, but what's so different about my ship girls coming back from a victory? Even I said it myself when I explained to them on the night before I changed my drilling: I drilled them the same way that I drilled my regular soldiers because I was indiscriminate in my belief that I could produce the best soldiers in the world. So why is my brain stuck on viewing them as normal girls, not soldiers?

Is it because deep inside, I hold some sort of affection for them already, and it's just that I don't realize it myself yet? Or is it because it's just a gender thing, that I prefer to see men fighting, not women? I haven't been able to figure it out, but I feel like this's gonna be one of those things that I probably won't ever get to find out.

Got an email saying that someone's going to fly in tomorrow to take a look at the piano. Fuck yeah.

Houshou came to speak with me today when the destroyers were out on their mission. She asked for permission to build an _izakaya_ (unfortunately I don't know the kanji for this), which is like a sort of bar or small restaurant. I asked her why, because I was curious to know what her intentions where, and she said that she had heard of and visited several of these restaurants while she was in the mainland and wanted to open one herself in the base for the rest of the ship girls. She said that it would be a good idea because the base would soon become occupied with many more ship girls, and that her little izakaya would provide a place for social engagement and relaxation, and just a place to grab a bite to eat and something to drink when the mess halls were closed. It reminded me of the times when I was in Hargrave and when I was just fresh outta Hargrave too, when I first joined the Navy, when my friends and I would always come back late from drills and other shit and find to our dismay that the cafeterias would be closed by the time we got there and there really wasn't anything we could do or anywhere else we could go. So I gave her permission and spent a good couple hours with her, Mamiya, and Irako planning out how we'd get around to actually building the bar.

In return for allowing her to build her own izakaya on site, Houshou promised that she would provide me with free sake whenever I felt the urge to drink while her shop was open, which I declined because I don't like drinking. I told Houshou, who initially was dismayed at my declination, that I had very bad experiences with alcohol before, including one time when one of my petty officers in the navy practically force-fed me a half bottle of Jack Daniel's and made me end up spending the next day hunched over the goddamn toilet on one of our nights off. I demoted the guy who did that, but only by a rank that he got back anyway within a month. But instead I told her that I would frequent her shop for the food. I'm much more interested in Japanese food than alcohol, but that's just me.

The stereo that I installed in my office hasn't been in use yet because I forgot to bring an extension cord that'll hook up my stereo to my laptop that I have in my office so that I can just play music directly from my laptop to the stereo and have music playing that way. It should be coming in soon...hopefully, I still don't really have an idea of how fast personal stuff gets shipped to Okinawa.

I'm kind of looking forward to the end of this week, actually. I wanna see how the other ship girls are like, I really do. I just hope they're just as nice as Samidare and as helpful as Akashi and Ooyodo, and I hope I don't screw up my image for them too. Certainly I hope what happened with my initial destroyers doesn't repeat itself when I meet the others.

Batsubyou just came into my room - it seems I forgot to close the door, somehow I left it ajar. Error didn't come immediately at first, so Batsubyou made himself comfortable on top of my bed on the bedcovers, meowing at me as if telling me to go join him. I guess I will. Oh, wait, I can hear Error coming in now...

Yeah, Error whisked Batsubyou away. She mumbled something that sounded kinda like an apology, but I can't be too sure. Oh well, I wanted to pet Batsubyou once, but I can do that tomorrow.


	12. January 14th, 2014

Tuesday, January 14th, 2014.

I've decided to start adding in the days at the beginning of each log from now on. I keep forgetting which day it is. Goddamn first world problems.

Piano maintenance guy came in today and tuned and fixed the piano in the office. Flew in in a Little Bird from the mainland, along with some building materials for Houshou's soon-to-be izakaya (how the fuck did they even order that without me knowing? I need to ask 'em). I didn't know what his name was, so I just called him piano-fixer-guy, literally that in Japanese, and he didn't seem to mind. Probably 'cause I'm American and it's pretty obvious to natural Japanese speakers that my Japanese is pretty rough, even if I have a fundamental understanding of how to speak it. But the piano's fixed, so my confidence in HQ's ability to fulfill what I request's pretty high. This means that they're showin' the Moebius Armament a lotta attention, even if it's something as trivial as fixing a goddamn piano.

You know how long that woulda taken if I were still back in America? A month. You'd be lucky to get something like a piano fixed if it got done within a month. USA USA USA, am I right?

Today was a bit light on the paperwork, and Error was busy with Akashi and Ooyodo managing miscellaneous stuff around the base, so I hung out with Batsubyou a bit. I don't know what Error did with the bag 'a catnip I bought her that came in the other day with the motherload 'a supplies they shipped in, but I had to make do without it, and luckily Batsubyou liked me well enough. I mean, if he (she?) didn't like me at all, he woulda never come into my room last night. I watched that video of Dubstep Cat when it first went viral, so now whenever I hang out with cats, I have a bad habit of emulating said Dubstep Cat and take their paws to wave around like a DJ. Obviously Batsubyou didn't know what the fuck I was doing and thought it amusing that I was shaking his paws around like crazy. At least he didn't get pissed off.

I've never really been frightened by animals. My dad was bitten by a dog on his right hand pretty badly when he was a kid, so he's always had a bad time around dogs, though now that he's older he's gotten over it (mostly). He still has the scars, though, they never went away. I guess you could say that those scars're like the last remnants of his fear of dogs, but then again not really. My mom's got a bit of a beesting allergy, so she's always been extremely conscious of it. Yeah, when she gets stung, her body'll throw a fit by making her vomit and stuff, but it's not like other beesting allergies where people outright drop dead when they're stung, but even still, my mom'll blow a hole in our house if that's the only way to get rid of a bee in the house.

You think I'm kidding, and the thing is, I wish I were. She shot a fly in our house thinking it was a bee once with a .500 Smith & Wesson and left a big-ass hole in our glass sliding door that leads out to the backyard. It was fun having to deal with all those neighbors and policemen who came to our house investigating what exactly that gunshot was all about while my mom had to deal with almost full deafness in both ears for about eight hours. We were just glad she didn't actually kill anyone doing that, and since then she's been a bit more calm.

But still.

I don't _love _animals as much as other people do. Maybe it's 'cause we've never owned pets in my household before...for obvious reasons. But I would be lying if I said I didn't like being around them. To me, it's cool being around a cat or a dog who's also cool with you. It's different than being around another human being who's your friend. It's a silent kind of mutually accepting relationship, you and that dog, or cat, or whatever pet or animal's hanging out with you, and neither of you have to say anything to acknowledge the other. It's awesome. And on those dark, rainy, stormy nights, or maybe on a day that you're not really enjoying too well, that pet just being there can make all the difference.

There was this one time one of Marine Corps regiments...I think it was the 5th Regiment, if I'm not mistaken...that had to stay a few night aboard the _George Washington_. They had a squad trained in the usage of bomb and attack dogs, and they brought their dogs aboard too. All my men who were big dog buffs or liked animals literally spent all day playing around with them, even though technically speaking they're not allowed to, but the Marine guys were chill. One of those dogs managed to find its way into my room one night - I don't know how - and just walked right in like he owned the place. I thought it was one 'a my men comin' in to talk to me about something, but when I saw the dog, I got up to take it back to its sergeant, but he just jumped up onto my bed and just sat there, lookin' at me like, bitch, lemme stay. So I stared back at it, like, a'ight, do what'cha want.

What am I even talking about?

Then, Batsubyou hopped up onto my shoulder when I took off my military uniform cap and sat on its belly right on top of my head. I dunno what made him think that was a good idea, but he stayed there for the rest of the day until nighttime, when Error came to take him away. I guess he likes it there. It's not bad for me either - makes me feel top-heavy, but it keeps my head nice and warm in this winter cold.

Imagine Murakumo's reaction when she walks into my office to ask about my orders for 'em later that day and she finds me doin' the Gendou pose from Neon Evangelion with Batsubyou the cat sitting on my head purring like a badass.

How does a cat purr like a badass? Is that like asking how many licks it'll take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?

But Murakumo givin' me a real strange look was the least 'a my worries. Error is positively jealous that I'm able to hang out with Batsubyou the cat like we're best buddies somehow. She tried pulling him off my head, and trust me, I tried to get him off too, but the one time we did manage to get him off my head, he jumped right back on. Then again, the fact that he literally clawed himself in place on my head, meaning that he dug his claws into my scalp and face, wasn't really exactly what I call pleasant.

Let's get to the important shit now that I've wasted a couple pages talking about cats and animals and Batsubyou and Error slapping me to convince him to get off my head. I analyzed the info my ship girls brought back from scouting out Sector B yesterday, and it matches up with all the info that HQ's sent me in regards to enemy profiles and other battle intel. Plus, they also managed to figure out some of the patrol routes for some of the enemy destroyer squadrons on the outer perimeters of the Sector. It'll help with the containment blockades that the UN fleet's established around Sector B. I sent them out at 1300 Hours today on another scouting mission, and they came back at around 1800 Hours with basically the same info. I'ma send them out there one last time, and if they don't find anything new, I'll send them deeper into Sector B to see if they can scout for some new data.

I asked them, before they left on their mission while I was debriefing them, if their training was helping them do their missions properly, and they said that the marksman training they were doing with Ooyodo were helpful, since obviously practicing their aim is going to help them out in an actual combat scenario, doesn't take a genius to figure that one out. Then I asked them if my drilling was useful at all, and all of them went dead quiet.

Which is sorta what I figured would happen, given how earlier events've panned out.

I told them that I wouldn't get angry if they spoke the truth, that I wanted to hear their opinion. Fubuki tried to squeeze their way outta it, telling me that my drills were fine as they were, that there wasn't anything particularly wrong with them. She said that they understood that drilling was just another part of their training. But I passed that off. I told that they were telling me shit that they thought I _wanted _to hear, and that doing that wouldn't work on me. I told them that telling people what they _want _to hear will almost never help them become better at what they're doing. I learned that the hardy way from one 'a my subordinate officers, a Chinese guy who was sent over from the Chinese army to become acquainted with American protocol and command, and while he was a decent guy and was a fantastic officer, he just kept telling me all the shit that I wanted to hear and at one point it literally felt like he was _trying _to suck me off. Like, I understand that respect and keeping face is a big part of Asian cultures, and maybe I just don't get it like I'm supposed to because I'm American, and _everyone _knows that _Americans _don't know how to show respect to any other culture except for their own, haw haw haw, but I didn't want these girls who're my new subordinates to do the same to me.

Murakumo, who usually isn't hesitant at all to put me on total blast if I say so, said right away that she didn't see the point of my drills. She said that all the drills did was teach them how to march, talk, and salute like a normal soldier in the army. I think I remember some stuff that she said, if I can think of it again...

"Like, why're you drilling us like normal soldiers? We're not normal soldiers! Look at us! Look at _this!_ (she pointed to her head array thingies) Do we look like normal soldiers? No! Then stop treating us like we are! We're ship girls! We're naval personnel or whatever the hell we're called on those official papers!"

"Murakumo, you shouldn't talk to Admiral like that..." Samidare said.

"Shut up, Samidare! Stop trying to cover for him! What's your problem anyway, being all mushy with him like that? Why don't you go be his personal secretary so you can do whatever you want with him?"

The conversation went something like that, and I stood up right after Murakumo said that, and Murakumo shut up real quick. I walked over to her real slow, 'cause in case you can't tell by now, I got super pissed off when Murakumo insulted Samidare like that. Something just snapped. I walked over to Murakumo and planted my feet right in front of her, real close, like barely less than a foot away. She tried backing away, but I ordered her to stand where she was.

I asked Murakumo to repeat what she said to Samidare. Mind you, I said this at first in a real low voice. Around this point, Akashi and Ooyodo came in with a few new reports but stopped dead at the door when they saw what was going on, watching us. Murakumo didn't say anything at first, so I repeated myself again, again really quietly. She refused, and I went ahead and practically screamed in her face to repeat it.

That scream really shook her. I could see it in her eyes, and even if I couldn't see it in her eyes, I could see it in her head array, because they drooped down instantly and kept drooping further and further down the more I yelled in her face.

I asked her, screaming, mind you, if she had a problem with Samidare being nice to me. I asked her if there was anything wrong inherently with the fact that Samidare was being nice to me. I asked her if there was anything wrong with her being friendly and approachable to me, a fucking foreigner sonuvabitch who needed help in adjusting to a life new lifestyle and working with people who weren't American. I ordered her to answer me, and she gave me a really, really, _really _small no. So I kept layin' the hammer on her. I yelled at her that she could insult me or the way that I conducted things in this base all she fucking wanted. She can blast me about anything about me all she wants. Because honestly, at the end of the day, I'm still her commanding officer, and no amount of slanderous words is ever gonna change that. But if she wanted to talk shit about anyone else on base, especially about someone who's been especially helpful to me in getting me acquainted with the base and helping me with my rough language skills, Murakumo ought'a come straight to my office so that I can scream at her like this one more time. It would save us the time of me hunting her down and yelling at her again.

By the way, just for the record, I know how to yell at people to make the average Joe off the streets shit his pants. Murakumo's head arrays were pointing straight down by the time I was done. You can imagine what she was like besides that.

I really shouldn't've chewed her out then, right before a damn mission. I shoulda known better. Goddamn it.

After I was done with Murakumo, I dismissed them. Most of them left right away 'cause 'a obvious reasons. Murakumo stood there for a minute, wiping her eyes as best she could, and Samidare, who still stayed, tried to comfort her but Murakumo wouldn't let her. She just gave Samidare a real dirty look and ran out. This is the part of the day that I can clearly remember, when Samidare watches Murakumo run outta my office and turns to me:

"C-Commander! What was that all about? You - you didn't need to make Murakumo cry!"

"She insulted you. I won't stand for that."

"Even if it was an insult, that - something like that is trivial! It wasn't worth doing that! Don't you think you just overreacted?"

"Yeah, you can say I overreacted. But I can overreact some more if she doesn't learn her lesson."

"Commander! You don't need to defend me! What's between me and Murakumo is just between us! You don't need to feel like you need to get involved!"

"Then stop me, Samidare. Can you do that? Can you stop me?"

She didn't say anything after that. She looked like she was tearing up a bit as well. After that, she, too, ran out.

So now I just alienated one of the few people on this base whom I can consider a friend and I just made another one potentially hate me for the rest of my fucking life. All because I'm a stubborn motherfucker.

Samidare didn't say anything to me when I made her the flagship of today's mission, and when they returned from duty, she handed me the mission review without a word and left my office. So that doesn't help me at all.

Looks like the piano's fixed, but I broke a lot more things than that.

And this time, I can't call any Piano-Maintenance-Guy to come 'n fix 'em.


	13. January 15th, 2014

Wednesday, January 15th, 2014.

It was hella awkward at breakfast this morning. Word that I had ripped Murakumo a new one had quickly spread overnight throughout the base - well, that's not exactly all that hard to do when there's only me and a handful of other ship girls on site anyway, so Mamiya, Houshou, and Irako were all painfully conscious of it when I walked into the cafeteria to make my breakfast and found everyone else already there. It had been fairly quiet when I walked in, but the moment they realized I was strolling in they all shut up right away and ate their food in silence. Usually I sit in the mess hall too, not necessarily with the girls but by myself in another table nearby, but today I sat two tables over from where I normally sit. But barely five minutes into eating I felt like the atmosphere was gonna choke me the hell out if I didn't move myself out, so I just thought fuck this and picked up my food to go eat in my office.

Honestly, it's better that I did that at the time.

As if karma was rippin' my ass a new buttcrack, I found a giant three-foot stack of reports and papers sitting on my desk. As it turns out, the mission review profiles that I processed from my ship girls' got received and analyzed hella quick over at HQ in Tokyo, which I should've expected seeing how high of a classification level the entire Moebius Armament Program is by itself. The one silver lining with that giant stack of reports and papers and orders was that there was a small box sitting on the middle of my desk, containing the extension cord that I had ordered in order to hook up the stereos on the walls of my office to my laptop, so the first thing I did was open it up and hook up my devices. At least I was able to put on some relaxing chillstep music while I pored over those reports one by one.

By the way, I forgot to mention this but I've moved my drilling times for the ship girls up earlier in the day because I've been sending them on their missions in the early afternoon. I don't know if that'll stay that way or if their mission times will be more variable in the future, but it'll depend on what they find on their scouting missions and what HQ determines and recommends that I instruct them to do.

That being said, I cancelled drilling for today because it rained pretty hard overnight and it was still raining for a bit in the morning right up until lunch. Literally the rain stopped ten minutes before scheduled drilling, like nature was saying haha fuck you, yeah that's right, that's what you get for treating your own girls like shit, bastard. Like, okay, what am I supposed to do, just go up to them and apologize like it was nothing, what I did yesterday?

But even if drilling was canceled, missions can't be canceled. It's not like ship girls need to worry about the cold or the temperature like normal humans do. They can feel cold or warmth, but it's not going to make them uncomfortable or kill them like humans will. The only time they need to worry about in terms of weather is when they're out at sea, where it'll be stormy and the skies will be dark and the waters will be hard to work with. But despite that, a mission's a mission.

I sent them off at 1230 Hours this time to take advantage of the fact that it had stopped raining. The rainclouds were still overhead, so knowing how weather works, I guessed that it would rain again later today.

The freaky thing is, when the ship girls came into my office to receive their mission briefing, Murakumo's head arrays were lit bright, bright red. Normally they'd be green. I wonder what that meant, hmm...

So partly because of that, I literally told them to leave now with the same objectives. They weren't in my office for more than half a minute. But again, Samidare lagged behind when everyone else filed out and talked to me for a bit. She said that after the yelling that I had given Murakumo, she had gone into her dorm room and talked things out, so apparently things were cool between them now. But she told me that if I didn't want Murakumo to keep sulking for a long time, and she implored me to make up with her. Hopefully that didn't come out wrong. But I told Samidare that I didn't know how I'd build back the bridge that I burned yesterday. I didn't know any of them well enough to know how I'd make it up to Murakumo. To be honest, not only did I burn the bridge, but it felt like I nuked it from orbit with a giant particle beam accelerator cannon or something. Samidare told me to buy her or make her a cake.

A cake? Is Samidare trying to pull a GlaDos on me? ? ?

Samidare explained that because Christmas had just passed recently, Murakumo had wanted to get into some festivities, but because they weren't allowed to go out and spend the holidays out in the cities, everyone got bummed out, Murakumo in particular. Apparently she wanted to buy and eat a Christmas-themed cake. So Samidare said that if I could buy one or make one for her, it would probably have a good chance of getting her spirits up and save my reputation.

I told Samidare that I don't give a shit about reputation. Well, that's not accurate, I do to a certain extent, but I care more about not making Murakumo my permanent enemy for the rest of the time that I'm here at Okinawa than trying to make amends simply for the sake of reputation. But I told her that I would consider it. I asked Samidare if her opinion of me changed at all. She said that she now knew that I had some things to work on, but she said she was grateful that I was willing to stand up for her. She said that there weren't very many people she met before who had defended her like that.

So after they left, I headed over to the mess hall where Irako was planning what she and Mamiya would make for dinner tonight when the ship girls came back from their mission. I asked her if the kitchens had stuff to make a cake, and Irako and I checked our foodstuff supplies but found that we couldn't make a cake with what we had. We were running low on eggs, and we had no whipped cream or anything to make little Christmas decorations on the cake to make it all Christmas-themed like Murakumo had wanted. Irako asked me why I wanted to make a cake, and I explained the whole bit about me and Murakumo and how Samidare told me that I should make a cake for her to calm her down and stuff.

Irako informed me of a town nearby outside of base, a town called Ginoza, where there was a little supermarket where I could probably go and buy the stuff I needed to make a cake. I asked her if there was like a cake shop there too, but she said she wasn't sure. She hadn't actually been there herself. So I decided just to go right away. I put on my civvie clothes and started walking over, since we don't have any land vehicles on site. The only vehicles are the ship girls...and for obvious reasons I refrain from calling them "vehicles".

It shouldn't come as a surprise that twenty minutes into the walk to Ginoza, it started raining again. It took forty minutes to walk there. Fuck me.

As I thought, there was no specialty cake shop there in town, but I did find the rest of the ingredients I needed to make a cake. I've made cakes before - mainly for myself on my own birthdays, but I only did that when I was in high school, and afterwards I promised myself I wouldn't waste my own time like that ever again. If you wanna celebrate birthdays, they ought'a be celebrated with other people. Birthdays are never meant to be celebrated by yourself and only yourself. Something's very wrong if you think celebrating your own birthday by yourself is good in any way.

Even worse, after I bought everything that I needed, when I exited the supermarket, I found the rain pouring down even harder. It was at the point where the ingredients in my bags would be thoroughly ruined if I didn't cover them or protect them somehow, and it wasn't looking like I could just sit the rain out. So I had to bite the bullet and take off my coat to put over my bags and carry them that way for forty minutes back to base. In America, we've got this saying "when it rains it pours", meaning that if one thing goes wrong, suddenly you could feel like everything else that day is going wrong. I like to call it Murphy's Law. I don't know if Japanese has a phrase like that.

So that sucked, but at least the ingredients were safe since my coat was moderately waterproof. The ship girls hadn't come back by the time I came back from the supermarket, so I took a hot shower before going into the kitchens to make Murakumo a cake. It took me a few tries to get it right, since my cake-making skills were extremely rusty, but eventually I got one that was good enough. Not something I'd be proud of, but not something you'd look at and start doubting the taste just by its looks. Mamiya, who had come back to the kitchens after helping Houshou out with plans for the new izakaya, offered her assistance after hearing the context from Irako, but I declined, telling her that this was something I would have to do, and that accepting someone else's help would feel like a cheap cop-out.

When I taste-tested my cake, it didn't taste great. It didn't taste _bad_, just it didn't taste like anything spectacular or memorable. But usually whenever I make food for myself, I usually don't cook for the _taste_, just to get myself fed. But when I asked Mamiya to taste it, she said it was the best cake she'd ever tasted. I didn't want to believe her, so Mamiya dragged Irako and Houshou over to taste the cake, and they all agreed that my cake was excellent. I thought they were trolling me, but they aren't the kind to troll me, so I had to take their word for it. Honestly, it's not like I used any cliched secret ingredient or did anything special.

But having their approval did make me feel a bit more secure about my uncertain cooking skills when the ship girls did return to base after their mission. Samidare, as usual, brought me the post-action mission report, and I told her to call Murakumo to my office. Samidare reminded me that I could just use the PA system, but I told her that I would rather keep this on the down-low. She gave me this wry little smile, asking me if I had gotten the cake. I told her that I made one, so Samidare leaves me with a smile and calls Murakumo to my office.

When Murakumo did come in, her head arrays were still bright red. A bit lighter of a hue of red, but still red nonetheless. She demanded what I wanted, that she be left alone, so I showed her the cake that I made for her. I told her that Samidare recommended that I do it to make Murakumo feel better. Murakumo just scowled at me and told me that it would take a whole lot more than just a cake to make her get over her anger towards me, if it even could. She said that something like that, yelling at her enough to make her cry wasn't going just slip by her with the help of some homemade cake. But I noticed that the red hue in her glowing head arrays was becoming less and less saturated over time, so that probably meant something, right?

I just walked up to her and shoved a forkful of cake into her mouth.

I watched for her reaction, not on her face, but on her head arrays, and just like I thought, the glows went straight from red to a vivid, fluctuating green. I guess the cake strat worked, so I gave her the rest of the cake.

Murakumo said that I shouldn't expect to get any preferential treatment from Murakumo just because of the cake, or that her little grudge against me was resolved. But she did say the cake was good. I told Murakumo that I would try not to yell at her again. It wasn't my intention to make her cry or to make her feel bad, but obviously it's hard to mean that when you make someone cry by yelling at them. I told her that the cake was my way of trying to make her feel better - not necessarily as an apology, because if you make someone cry by screaming at them for something you thought they did wrong, that's not something a stupid fucking "sorry", not even a cake, no matter how delicious, can resolve by itself. I told her that I didn't want us to all feel like enemies in the same base, and that I was willing to take steps to go back to us feeling like comrades at least again.

So that rounded out the night. But just this past hour I've been coughing nonstop, like every minute or so. Turns out walking out in the rain for nearly an hour and a half isn't good for your health.

Oh well. It's not like the ship girls would care.


	14. January 16th, 2014

Thursday, January 16th, 2014.

As it turns out, walking in the rain for about an hour and a half is hazardous to your health.

I've been dealing with a huge fever today. Felt horrible waking up and barely made it to the mess hall by myself, and Mamiya and Irako, being the excellent people they are, instantly knew what was going on and recommended that I take the day off, and I told them that I'd go back to bed after the paperwork was done and I sent the ship girls on their daily mission.

Being sick's nothing new, but it doesn't mean I like it. I remember back in the elementary school and middle school days, kids my age always loved getting sick because that meant having a legitimate reason to skip school and not have to do anything productive. I was one of those people too, until I got to high school and found out the hard way that being sick isn't necessarily something you _wanted _to be if you could help it. And it's been applied to every single place I've gone and worked at. There's just so much fucking work that needs to be done that you can't even _afford _to be sick. You get to the point where you know that there's work to be done, and you being sick is just going to get in your own way. Funny how perception on stuff changes over time.

My temperature this morning when I checked was around 105 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40.6 degrees Celsius since we're in Japan and we don't use the motherfuckin' Fahrenheit shit. I really struggled on today's reports and paperwork - my memories of this morning are super blurry because of the fever. I remember Ooyodo and Samidare frequently bringing me lots and lots of cold tea, but I told them that in order to break a fever, I would need hot tea, so they brought me that instead. I don't really remember much else, to be honest.

I remember Ooyodo telling me that at some point this morning I just flat out fell asleep with my head on my desk. Probably explains why I wasn't able to get through all the paperwork today, so I'll have to procrastinate until tomorrow. Gotta focus on breaking the fever first, then dealing with anything else is easy. I asked Ooyodo to formulate mission plans just for today because obviously with the state I was in earlier today, I probably would've told the ship girls to go out there and get themselves blown up or something ridiculously stupid, and I do remember getting outta my office to go back to my bedroom to swaddle myself up in thick clothes and get in bed.

Thankfully, I was able to break the fever by the time I woke up, which was like barely an hour before the time of me writing this, so that's good, it means I at least get to work tomorrow, but I dunno what else I'll need to deal with. Typically for me, after a fever comes an incessant cough that lasts for about two weeks without any medicines or cough drops. Gonna look forward to that, and no, that so totally wasn't meant to be sarcastic at all. Honest.

Right now my head still throbs and I'm still a bit dizzy - whenever I get fevers, I end up feeling a bit woozy like I've gotten tipsy from drinking, weird stuff - but I plan to go back to sleep after finishing the journal entry for today. Surprisingly, shortly after I woke up about an hour ago, Murakumo came into my office with some of my more important papers and the post-action mission report of today's mission. She also brought me a tray of hot tea and even two slices of the cake that I had made for her. I asked her why she brought me the cake that I made for her, and she said that she felt bad for causing me to get sick just from trying to get ingredients to make her a cake, and that she would feel even worse if she didn't at least share some of it with me.

I mean, cake is food, and food is - well, food, so it's not like I'm going to refuse.

I better finish this fast, I can feel my drowsiness creeping dangerously back up on me again.

Murakumo was really nice to me today. Maybe it's 'cause she feels bad for me getting sick and all. Maybe she isn't such an asshole all the time. Maybe, but who knows.

I'm also really looking forward to meeting the new ship girls tomorrow, but then again that also depends on what kind of a health state I'm in. I don't wanna have to meet them coughing my ass off and wondering if they from that point on think I'm some kinda binge smoker or chain smoker.

The other girls paid me a visit too, soon after Murakumo came along. Since ship girls can't get sick the way humans do, it wasn't like I needed to worry about them catching my fever or something. I guess it's an enviable thing, never having to worry about getting sick, but for them, maybe it's not envy that they would feel. For now, they've left, but I get the feeling some of them may come back tonight. Dunno if I'll already be asleep by then. Batsubyou somehow found his way to me and sat at my feet like he's asking me if I was okay. I don't know what he wants. That cat is still the weirdest cat I've ever met.

Seriously, what do you want from me, cat, I'm not gonna say you're fine too.

I'm going to sleep. It's 'bout that time...


	15. January 17th, 2014

Friday, January 17th, 2014.

The big guns have arrived, and I didn't even need to call for an exterminator. I'm just surprised I managed to get up in time to go out and meet them when they got flown in earlier this morning at 0840 hours or something. I thought for sure I would oversleep because my body's tired from trying to break the fever as quickly as possible. The other ship girls seemed pretty excited to be receiving more comrades to add to the base, understandably. Just sending out destroyers all the time probably isn't a sound naval strategy anyway.

Like HQ had promised, we got two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, a light carrier, a standard carrier, a battleship, and a submarine. Here we go...

For our two light cruisers, we got Kitakami (北上, apparently named after some river) and her fellow ship sister Ooi (大井, again apparently named after some river, and if I'm not mistaken, literally translating her name would get me Big Well, hopefully I'm not wrong on that). Kitakami's like a calmer version of Samidare, friendly and chill at the same time, taking things at her own pace and not really bothered by many things, or at least that's the vibe I'm getting from her. But from what I can tell, Ooi is very close to Kitakami. I guess I can understand, seeing that they're both from the same class of light cruisers, but it's not like they look alike to warrant calling them sister, other than their identical uniforms. Plus, Ooi likes being around Kitakami, and when Kitakami talked with me shortly after they arrived, I saw Ooi looking at me a bit...how should I say, it's like she didn't like me talking to her. Jealousy? That's the only thing I can think of that can logically explain Ooi's rather shady behavior towards me. But if that's the case, then she would act a bit sassy towards me when she's talking to me, right? But that wasn't the case when I talked to her after talking to Kitakami. I dunno...I'll just leave it at this, that Kitakami's approachable and easy to talk to, but I should probably do so out of sight of Ooi.

For our heavy cruiser, Takao (高雄, maybe after a mountain? I know there're a couple mountains named Takao but hell if I know which one she's actually named after) has joined the ranks here. Not saying that none of the other ship girls do this, but Takao really carries herself like a professional, whatever that means. Strict, formal, no bullshit, my favorite combination of traits whenever I need to work with other people and call them co-workers. I think I'll come to enjoy working with her. Maybe I should make her my secretary one day and reassign Ooyodo to something else just to try it out, see how she does as my secretary. Not saying Ooyodo isn't doing her job or that I'm dissatisfied with her work, I'm just curious. But why the fuck does she wear such a short skirt? I asked her about it, and she said that that was just how her uniform was made. I asked her if she was fine with it, and she said that as long as people didn't stare so much, she wouldn't mind, but I could tell just by how she sounded that she did have problems with it before. I didn't bother asking since that's probably uncomfortable territory I'd be pushing into, and the last thing I wanna do is alienate a potentially great secretary. Wait, now that I remember, why the hell does she wear _airplanes_ as some sort of strap for her garterbelt? Since when was _that _a thing?

For our light carrier, we got Shouhou (祥鳳, I think that's Happy Phoenix or something, is there something about phoenixes and carriers in the Japanese navy?). Shouhou reminds me of a little bit more enthusiastic Houshou - well, I guess their names are similar too, while we're at it. Wait, both their names have to do something with phoenixes, right? Are they like part of the same class of light carriers or something? Whatever. Shouhou was nice and respectful, but like Takao, her clothes are a bit...like, I mean, if she's comfortable with wearing that, I guess it's fine, but it's going to be a bit before I get used to Shouhou rocking that sarashi around. I guess if I just treat it like she's wearing a sports bra, I'll get used to it faster. I shouldn't judge, I'm used to guys walking around with no shirts on back in America while on duty. Why should I let myself be bothered by my subordinates who prefer wearing nothing but sarashis? I blame society for inducing me to have double standards. When in doubt about some bad habit you have, blaming it on society is always a safe choice. Like that'll actually do you any good in life, right. I would comment on Shouhou's very obvious rack size as a guy, but I'll refrain from that since I don't wanna feel like I'm seeing my own subordinates like I were some drunk asshole trying to pick up girls off the street.

For our standard carrier, we got Souryuu (蒼龍, I know for sure that it means Blue Dragon, and again it's another one of those cases where someone's got a badass name that doesn't really fit them). She really reminds me of Samidare but more on the mature side, if that makes sense. Like Souryuu can get very cheerful and upbeat as Samidare can, but Souryuu looks and behaves more adult-like. I don't know if I'm doing a good job describing what I wanna say. I think Souryuu's our first twintail girl here - ah crap, never mind, I nearly forgot that Sazanami has twintails too, so Souryuu won't be the first. But unlike Sazanami, Souryuu's twintails are immediately noticeable. At least, they were to me. Figures why I almost forgot about Sazanami's. (Sorry, Sazanami.) And just like Samidare, Souryuu is super nice and kind to me. She's playful, but she won't let it get in the way of work, so she'll be serious when it's time to be serious, and I can appreciate that.

For our battleship, Kirishima's joined us. Goddamn, is she tall. She's slightly taller than me, and I consider myself to be pretty tall at around six feet. I can literally count the number of girls I've met in my life who were taller than me with the fingers on my hands, Kirishima now being one of them. She's basically like a taller, bespectacled version of Takao in battleship form: strict, formal, "professional", whatever that might mean in this context. Those detached sleeves she's wearing look really uncomfortable to have to deal with, and I asked Kirishima about it, but she said she didn't mind them. She saw my stereo system in my office and asked me if I had installed that, and when I told her that I had recently installed it but just hadn't gotten around to using it, she gave me a bit of a bright look, that look of approval or something. So I asked her if she liked music or something, and she said that she appreciated any officer who knew his or her way around electronics. So that probably means she's a techie, which is nice, since now I've got someone to refer to in case I have trouble with whatever devices later on. Probably.

And finally, for our submarine, we got I-168, or Imuya, which is her name if you say it in Japanese numbering. I swear to God her hair looks exactly like sherbet ice cream. Or maybe raspberry yogurt. Either way, just looking at her makes me crave fruits or candy or something sweet. It doesn't help that Imuya herself really likes sweets - I saw her head into the kitchen and come out with an orange popsicle. Besides that, I should've expected that submarine ship girls wear swimsuits. Of course, right, because someone out there who made their "uniforms" was a swimsuit fetishist. Goddamn it, who the fuck was in charge of making these girls' uniforms anyway. But complaining about clothes aside, Imuya is practically Samidare-tier cute, if that makes sense, and that's all I'll say. I'll stop before I go on making a list that ranks all the ship girls here in tiers of cuteness, 'cause my God that'll be a really long explanation I'll have to give to both my subordinates and to HQ if they find me making something like that.

Since they came early in the morning, they had a couple hours to move their stuff into the dorms. The problem with their move-in's that most of them, aside from Kitakami and Ooi, since they're in the same category of ships - er, ship girls - are gonna have to spend the next however many days, weeks, or months until we get more ship girls by themselves in their respective dorms. Like I mentioned way before, the dorms are separated by ship category. I mean, it won't be a _big _problem or anything, but I am kinda concerned that Takao, Shouhou, Souryuu, Kirishima, and Imuya might get a bit lonely, if that's accurate, because they don't have anyone else from their respective categories. Maybe something like that won't bother them in the end, but I'll keep that in mind in case I notice some of the ship girls being a bit down or something.

Orders from HQ that arrived soon after the new ship girls get fully situated at base basically told me to order everyone back out to Sector B. Luckily, the ship girls who came today are already trained in battle missions, having been through plenty of training and drills of their own back at the mainland, so they know what to do and can lead the destroyers. This time, though, it wasn't a reconnaissance mission I was sending my girls out on, but an actual assault mission. Their objectives were to seek out enemy ships in Abyssal waters at Sector B, around the outer perimeter, and gain experience and information on enemy attack formations and tactics. So at 1130 Hours, with Kirishima as flagship, I sent them out and went back to sleep in my room to try and sleep off my cough.

Problem is, when they came back about six hours later, Samidare was critically wounded. I woke up about an hour after they had come back, so imagine how badly my heart sank when Ooyodo informed me of Samidare's condition when I went back to my office to take care of any paperwork that would've come in over the course of the day. When I went to go check on Samidare, she wasn't conscious. According to Akashi, she may need to take the next three or four days off to recover. I asked what she had been hit by to nearly get killed - or, sunk would be the more appropriate word in this case - and Akashi said that the ship girls reported running into something called the Re-Class battleship, and that Samidare had literally been knocked straight out of battle before they could get into the fight by two direct hits from a 16-inch cannon. Had another 16-inch shell hit the same place that the other two shells had, Samidare's body would've been shredded in half, and she would've bled out before the fleet could get back to base.

Before I left the medbay, Akashi told me to go talk to Murakumo. According to Kirishima, whom I made the flagship for the mission, Murakumo was supposed to have been covering Samidare's right flank, the direction from which Samidare was hit, but Murakumo was too busy taking pot shots at some passing destroyers, apparently some I-classes, and because Murakumo was distracted, the Re-Class was able to get range to be able to take her shots.

I made a detour to my office first to read up on the post-action mission report that Kirishima left on my desk. (In case you haven't caught on by now, I've made it so that whoever's the flagship of the mission is responsible for the post-action mission report so I know what happened during the battle.) They ran into a whole fleet of I-classes and that Re-Class who completely wrecked Samidare. Apparently it was a really fierce battle between them. What I read on the Re-Class from analyzed reports sent by HQ basically said that Re-Class is something of a super-battleship who can easily fight against fleets many times the size of her own, even if she's by herself. The fact that my fleet had a lot of trouble dealing with her isn't surprising, and it's definitely worrying knowing that Re-Class is potentially one of the enemies the ship girls can run into from the very get-go. I was hoping that wouldn't be the case, but Sector B doesn't exactly sound like the place to be all nice and steady and cooperating from the very start anyway. Other than that, the ship girls know what kind of attacks Re-Class has and will use against them, but that doesn't make them any less dangerous, and that was pretty much about it for the report.

After that, I went over to the destroyers' dorm. I've passed by the destroyers' dorm a few times before; usually during nighttime before curfew, the girls would be talking, playing board games or cards or video games, or doing stuff together. They'd be pretty lively, is my point. But this time when I went over to go see if I could talk to Murakumo, it was dead quiet. It doesn't take a motherfuckin' genius to tell that something was really off tonight, presumably because of the fact that Samidare almost died today. I knocked on the door, and Fubuki answered it, barely peeking out from the door, and I asked her if Murakumo was in so I could talk to her. Fubuki asked me if I really did want to talk to her, because Murakumo was in no shape to talk to anyone at the moment. I told her that as her commanding officer, I kinda needed to, because I was already told of her situation. Fubuki almost reluctantly closed the door on me to go see if Murakumo would be willing to talk to me and came back saying that she didn't.

Let me take this time to say that honestly, if I wasn't their commanding officer, I would've just let this go. But because I am, I've gotta do things that normally I wouldn't do, like talk to someone who really needs to be talked to. I ordered Fubuki to let me in, and when Fubuki tried to protest it, saying that I really shouldn't bother Murakumo, I told her that I wasn't willing to repeat myself, so she let me in. I'm almost forgetting to mention that almost all of the destroyers had some sort of bandage on them, with the sole exception of Inazuma, who didn't look too thrilled by the fact that she was the only one who didn't get hit at all. Murakumo, too, had a bandage wrapped around both legs from a couple 5-inch cannon rounds.

When I found Murakumo in her futon (the ship girls can choose whether they want to sleep in a futon or a normal bed, whichever they prefer), she immediately turned her back to me underneath her bedsheets. She told me to go away, that she already knew why I was there in her dorm. I told her to tell me why I was there, then, if she so claimed that she knew, and Murakumo answered that I was there to scold her and tell her that she screwed up badly by letting Samidare get injured like she did. Well, I told her that she got it half right, the part about Samidare getting injured and whatnot. I said I wasn't going to yell at her or scold her. She said she didn't want to believe me. Since narrating our conversation like this is kinda awkward for me to write, I'll just write it out in a dialogue kinda format and hope that I can remember as much of our conversation as I can.

"Why won't you yell at me? You yelled at me before, right? Why shouldn't you yell at me for messing up like this this time?"

"Because this time around, the mistake you made was an honest mistake. You didn't _intend _on letting Samidare get hurt if you could help it."

"But she ended up getting hurt anyway! How's that supposed to make me feel better, huh?"

"I'm not trying to make you feel better. I'm trying to talk to you and make sure you know what you did wrong and will do what you can to make sure you don't do it twice."

"I _know _what I did wrong! Now shut up and go away, you idiot!"

"Okay, then, I will. But before I go, can I ask you one more thing?"

"What? Say it quick and get out..."

"Are you more upset about the fact that you got Samidare hurt, or are you more upset that I might've been really angry at you again for getting Samidare hurt?"

"...I don't know..."

"Then next time something like this happens, and hopefully it won't, be more worried about the ship girl who got hurt, not about me getting angry."

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Why not? How doesn't it make sense?"

"Because you're being contradictory."

"How am I being contradictory?"

"Because you yelled at me that other day just for dissing Samidare, but now you're not angry at all at me for getting Samidare heavily damaged."

"I said it before, and I'll say it as many times I need to in order for you to get it. That time that I yelled at you, you _wanted _to hurt Samidare's feelings, so I punished you by screaming my ass off at you. This time around, it wasn't like you _wanted _Samidare to get hit, I'm assuming. Why should I yell at you for something you didn't intend on doing? If you were a soldier of mine back in America, maybe I would still yell at you. But you girls showed me that treating you girls exactly the same as I would treat my regular soldiers back in America doesn't work. I've learned a bit from you. Hopefully this learning thing can be mutual, yeah? Good night, Murakumo. If you want me to make you cake again to cheer you up, I will. Just talk to me."

And so I left it off there. I could tell that the other destroyers were listening in on the conversation because I overheard Sazanami muttering to herself "It'd be nice if we got some cake too..." as I was leaving the destroyer dorms.

I guess I know what to do tomorrow morning after paperwork.


	16. January 18th, 2014

Saturday, January 18th, 2014.

Partly because I've still got a nasty cough, partly because it's the frickin' weekend, and mainly because of that last big combat mission yesterday, I gathered everyone together in my office (except for Samidare, for obvious reasons) and called today off for everyone, which all the ship girls appreciated. I know from first-hand experience what it feels like the day after you just barely made it out alive from a brutal mission. Simply put, you just don't feel like doing _anything _productive. You just don't.

After getting done with the morning paperwork and reports and shit, which thankfully there weren't a lot of, I went over to the kitchen and went fuckin' ham. I ended up using up all the cake ingredients that I bought earlier in the week and baked four cakes just like the one I made for Murakumo. Mamiya and Irako were quite surprised at me baking at such an odd time, but I explained to them what I was doing and they understood and helped out. So when lunchtime rolled around, instead of having our usual lunch, there was cake for everyone. Fun times.

I've learned today that if there's cake, it's pretty hard for girls not to have fun in some way. For guys, it's a bit different, 'cause guys generally don't give a shit about something so trivial as cake. At least, that's what I experienced in America. But the little things get attention here, even if it's as little as cake. Then again, cake is a big effin' deal to some people in some places, and again, who am I to judge.

While everyone was enjoying the cake, I took a slice of one of them and sneaked out of the mess hall over to the infirmary, where Samidare was. I guess everyone else just kinda forgot about her, since everyone was too busy being happy over cake and stuff.

Samidare was awake when I visited her. Apparently ship girls heal really quickly. I gave her some cake and explained to her what was going on, the context behind the cake and everything. I asked her if everything was okay, if she was feeling anything particularly out of the ordinary. She said there really wasn't anything, other than the fact that she was super grateful that I made cake for everyone to enjoy and brought her some as well.

Because she's too weak to really feed herself, I had to feed her cake, which evidently came off as really embarrassing for Samidare. Personally, I don't mind if someone else feeds me, 'cause I've broken both my arms before at the same time and had all kinds of people feed me for about two or three weeks until my bones could heal well enough to the point where I could lift a fork and a spoon to my own mouth, but obviously those're my own experiences and I don't really expect other people to share that kind of experience. It's like, if you're in a situation where it's understandable that something needs to be done, for example, getting spoon-fed when you're seriously injured or sick, then the embarrassment kinda fades away after a while, and you just get over it. I told Samidare that, and she said that while she understood what I was trying to say, the part where she would get over the embarrassment factor would be the hardest part. Maybe that's just a girl thing, but I won't even try to go any further on gender opinions because I have no qualifications at all on making opinions of the other sex.

She did make me lock the door to her room in the infirmary first before I fed her and made me promise not to ever tell anyone that I fed her cake, otherwise she'd hate me forever and/or die out of sheer embarrassment, whichever came first. I told her not to die because of the cake, because I was worried enough from getting the report that she'd been heavily damaged and almost outright killed. Samidare apologized real quick and became pretty quiet after that as I fed her the cake slice.

I don't think this was made very clear in my last journal entry, but when I was first told yesterday that Samidare was heavily damaged and I found out exactly to what extent she'd be injured, my heart sank faster than I've ever felt it sink in a really, really long time. Earlier this morning, I kinda sat down and thought about why I felt that way, but I didn't have to spend too much time to figure out why. Back in America, or at least before I came here to Okinawa, I was used to sending men to their deaths. Like I've probably mentioned before, it's just a part of the job, knowing that as an officer, one of your responsibilities is to give orders to your men, and oftentimes, those orders aren't the easiest orders to give, especially when it involves sending them to an AO that you know's got a pretty high chance of causing something to go very, very wrong for your men. Sometimes, a few guys might get wounded or even killed - sometimes none of them get hurt and everyone comes back safely, and sometimes none of them come back, not in one piece, anyway.

So I'm used to that. But this isn't America, like I keep reminding myself in this fucking journal. This isn't America, and I'm not commanding or giving orders to normal soldiers whom I've specifically trained to to realize that their very next mission could very well be their last, in different ways, too. I'm part of the Moebius Armament Program, commanding specialized humanoid weapons called ship girls, or "naval personnel" if we wanna be fucking political. The hardest part for me about all this for me to digest is the fact that if I didn't know who they really were and I ran into them randomly on the streets or something, I wouldn't be able to tell that these girls were specifically constructed - not trained, not born, but _made _- to be soldiers and to fight.

Something about that chills me more than sending any infinite amount of my own men to their deaths in Iraq or Afghanistan or something.

So that's why I'm okay with treating these girls better than I would my regular soldiers back in America. I would be horrified at myself if I gave any wounded soldier this kind of special treatment if I were still on tour in the Middle East, but this is much different. And I suppose the fact that all the girls at base with me right now are all very good-looking, anywhere from cute to sexy to beautiful, goes longer of a way than I might give it credit for.

That's why I've grown to care just a little bit more for these girls. Maybe I've got some biases in my head, but a girl like Samidare going out to sea with a couple cannons on her back and arms fighting these weird alien-like abyssal enemies and nearly getting her body torn in half by a couple cannon shots doesn't seem right at all. If these were boys or men I was sending out, admittedly, I wouldn't feel as bad. But that's not the case here, is it now.

Funny thing is, unlike the other girls, who complemented me on how good the cake was, Samidare instead asked me if I could take a weekend or something and teach her how to bake a cake like I did. When I asked her why, she said that just like what I did for Murakumo, she wanted to make a cake for me to repay me for the cake that I gave her earlier today. I told her to focus on getting better soon, then we can think about cooking lessons.

I left Samidare to rest after I helped her finish her cake. I know what it feels like to be wounded really badly; even simple things like eating and talking can become absolute chores when you're in that kind of a state, and seeing that ship girls have human bodies, I'm guessing it's the same for them when they get badly wounded. I plan on visiting her again tomorrow, she seemed to be really glad that I came to pay her a visit, so if it makes her happy, I'll keep doing it. I had knew of a fellow officer in the Navy once who got shot a couple times when his destroyer got caught out at sea by some pirates, and his wife, who was a medic corps sergeant in another regiment, visited him practically every day, and they said he got better a full two weeks faster than expected. Dunno if that's scientifically proven, but here's to hoping that it works for Samidare too.

Only awkward part that came out of giving Samidare some cake was that when I was going back to my office, Murakumo caught me heading back from the medbay. Naturally, she asked me why I wasn't in the mess hall, where the other girls were still at and wondering where I'd gone off to, so I had to explain to her what I was doing, the whole giving Samidare some cake and all. Murakumo gave me this funny look that was asking me "Oh, are you _sure?" _So I asked her if she understood what I was telling her the night before, and she said she might've, and she left me alone after that.

Because I called off training, drilling, and the mission today, nothing else important really happened. Oh, hi, Batsubyou, you really like sleeping on my bed, don'tcha.


	17. January 19th, 2014

Sunday, January 19th, 2014.

So I'm trying out new secretaries, just to see if having different ship girls as my secretary would really change much. I'm sure it will, but I'm kinda curious as to how. So for today, I assigned Ooyodo, who's normally in charge of secretarial duties, to drill instructor and task manager and appointed Takao to be my new secretary. I thought it'd be a nice change 'a pace, but the girls didn't exactly agree...or, at least, they didn't at first. When I first told Ooyodo about my intention to switch secretaries, she gave me one 'a those thousand yard stares, as if she were saying how dare you remove me of my most important role or something like that. So I had to explain to her that it wasn't because I wasn't satisfied by her quality of work or because I thought she just wasn't a great secretary, but just that I wanted to know how other ship girls would handle the secretary position. She still didn't seem too happy about it but she complied in the end, but only before making me promise her that I would restore her to the position of secretary again, because that was the one job she felt she could do well all the time. I told her that while I couldn't make any promises, I would definitely make her my secretary again.

So then I go up to Takao and I ask her to be my secretary for a few days or a week or so, and she, too, stares at me like I'm off my goddamn rocker. She asked me why I was making her secretary so suddenly, so I had to explain to her too that I felt like having different secretaries, so then she asked me if I was dissatisfied with Ooyodo, whom she felt was a great secretary already, so she didn't really see the point of me appointing her secretary to replace her, so I had to give her my explanation all over again. Lots'a explaining and clearing up misunderstandings, as you can see and can probably imagine. I asked Takao why she was so surprised about me offering her the position of secretary, because here's the thing: to me, it doesn't really seem like something to freak out over. Back in America, I used to change my subordinate positions all the time and no one really made a fuss over it. But Takao said that the position of secretary was a coveted position among ship girls because it was a sign of recognition and prestige bestowed unto them if they performed well in training or combat or something like that. So apparently, for me to offer Takao the position of secretary when it's literally only been a day since Takao arrived here at Okinawa came off as really strange and unexpected to her. Granted, Takao did say that she was honored to be offered secretary, not to get her wrong or anything, but she said that it's just that I ought to stick with Ooyodo for longer, since she's more experienced and all. But I insisted, so eventually Takao gave in and accepted.

Goddamn, so much effort just to change secretaries...but still better than what I would've had to deal with in America. Even though I did mention that I made staff changes all the time, the fact that staff changes can take up to a month or longer depending on Uncle Sam's mood kinda balances that whole shit out, so...yeah.

Because of all this, I spent this morning showing Takao the ropes, which apparently Takao didn't expect me to do either. She asked me before I taught her the secretarial stuff why I didn't just have Ooyodo teach her the stuff, and I told her that something like this's supposed to be the officer's job and that I didn't feel it was right to just throw the responsibility onto someone else and expect them to do it. I know what that feels like and I ain't really keen on doing my own subordinates dirty like that. Thankfully, just like I'd thought and hoped, Takao makes an excellent secretary. She learned everything super fast and basically did as good of a job as Ooyodo would today, so I'm quite pleased. It's awesome having subordinates like these girls, lemme tell ya. Coming from a workplace that basically tells you in the fine print that you shouldn't really rely on anyone else but yourself to make sure shit gets done, having people like Takao and Ooyodo do their jobs more or less flawlessly and just the way I want them to be done is a damn luxury. The rest of the secretarial world could learn a thing or two from girls like them.

After morning paperwork, I got a call from HQ saying that they were sending a heli with building supplies that would be scheduled to arrive at around 1700 hours or so. At first I was like, wait, what, we ain't got a need for any bloody building supplies - and then I remembered that Houshou was planning out her little izakaya thing and was waiting on some construction supplies to refurbish one of the big empty rooms at base near the dorms, so that the ship girls could go to the izakaya after normal mess hall hours for a drink or a snack during the night. She had placed the order sometime after she planned it out with Mamiya and Irako and had to put the construction on hold until the supplies arrived. Then again, I suppose that begs the question of why it took them so damn long, but obviously I didn't ask the lady over at HQ that. What's more surprising is how HQ even bothered calling me instead of sending me an email or something like that, which's normally what they would've done. Guess I'm just not used to getting direct comms from the higher-ups in general.

After I got that call and confirmed the incoming shipment, Ooyodo and I sent Sazanami, Ushio, Kitakami, Ooi, Kirishima, Souryuu, and Imuya off on today's mission, which was just a recon mission, this time around the northern perimeters of Sector B. Don't want anyone to end up like Samidare and told the girls not to get themselves into any real firefights if they didn't need to. They were too willing to comply...it's a safe bet that what happened to Samidare's still really fresh on their minds. Then again, it's fresh on everyone's minds, to be perfectly honest.

Speaking of Samidare, I went and visited her after sending today's task force off, and surprisingly, I found Murakumo also there, talking with Samidare. Not surprisingly, given her disposition, Murakumo positively screamed at me to leave as soon as she saw me walk into Samidare's infirmary space. Maybe I came at the wrong time. Or the right time, depending on your perspective.

Apparently Murakumo had come to visit Samidare to see if she was okay, which she was. She was able to sit up today, unlike yesterday, when she wasn't even able to do that. Murakumo made me swear not to tell anyone about this, which I agreed to since I don't really care to frame her or anything.

Samidare was all smiles when I visited her. I actually don't know if I've seen her happier. And she wasn't lying either when she told me the other day that she and Murakumo had made up; they were talking like they were bestest pals forever, so I told them that I had some work to do and left them so that they could keep talking without me hanging around. Turns out Murakumo stuck around with Samidare until late at night. I guess there's a lot more going on between them than I thought.

I went out with Mamiya, Houshou, and Irako and received the building supplies that're for Houshou's izakaya, so I spent a lot of the afternoon and early evening helping them out with building the new izakaya. Admittedly, recently I've been kinda craving some late night snacks or something, not like chips or candy but just a light little meal, and since the mess hall isn't accessible after regular hours (well, technically, because I'm the commanding officer at base here, I don't need to care, but I don't like doing things that my own subordinates can't do just for the sake of convenience), I'm actually really looking forward to the new izakaya. We managed to get through about a third of it, because I keep forgetting that the women I'm working with are all ship girls and are at least a couple times stronger than even the strongest human, so they were able to pull off some shit that normal people probably couldn't without power tools or something like that. This'll mean that the izakaya should be up and running before the week is out. Sure feels nice knowing that I can have an expectation and know that there's a good chance it'll be met.

Today's task force came back while we were finishing up today's work on Houshou's izakaya. Unfortunately, all of them came back pretty banged up, so as soon as Ooyodo came back to report their conditions, I left to see them and ordered them to go to the infirmary so that Akashi could patch them up. Luckily, no one got seriously hurt, so thank God, I don't have to deal with more Samidare's, at least not for today. But some of them had some pretty nasty burns and cuts. Kitakami, whom I made flagship for this mission, reported that they had run into a particularly nasty group of enemies while out on their patrol, including two light cruisers and a heavy cruiser, which later I identified to be the To-Class, the Tsu-Class, and the Ri-Class, respectively from reading Kitakami's report and matching the descriptions with reports from HQ. Apparently, my task force and the enemy fleet had more or less run into each other without really expecting to see each other, and a rough firefight ensued, leaving both sides pretty banged up, so it wasn't like it was a one-sided fight or anything. It's just surprising to know that even heavy cruisers can be found at just the perimeters of Sector B...seems like I'll have to basically send everyone out, more or less, if I wanna ensure that everyone's got the highest chance of making it back in one piece.

I spent some extra time in the office sending HQ some emails basically asking them what the earliest date is that I can expect to receive more reinforcements, obviously in terms of more ship girls. Takao was there in my office when I came in, organizing some of the files that I had accidentally left on my desk to look at later, so I had to rearrange them like they were before and ended up making Takao apologize profusely for messing up my work. I had to spend about an hour in the office in email correspondence with the guy over at HQ, passing emails back and forth. The thing is, I don't like working at night - it's like my brain's got something against it and I don't have any motivation to work during the evening, which is ironic because I've been on plenty of night ops and I operate just fine, but whatever, at least my anemia thing didn't work up today, probably because I've still got a bit of a cough that's lingering around. So I just popped some music with the stereos I installed in my office to keep me motivated.

The funny thing is, when I started playing my music, Takao asked me what kind of music was being played. I thought for sure these girls would know what modern music would sound like. Actually, no, not even _thought_, I just _assumed_. But apparently the ship girls don't know about any kinds of modern music. At least, Takao didn't. Maybe some of them do, the ones who're more familiar with pop culture and stuff, but Takao took a liking to the chillstep that I was playing. Well, like they say, one of us, one of us.

I did find Error napping on my bed with Batsubyou the cat, though. That was kinda awkward. I didn't wanna wake her up in case she decided to wake-up DP me, so I just played a little bit more Skyrim on my computer until she woke up. And when she did, and when she realized I was also in the room with her, she snatched up Batsubyou and nearly knocked down my door off its hinges as she ran away. I mean, seriously, Error, if you've got something going for me, you might as well be upfront with it.


	18. January 20th, 2014

Monday, January 20th, 2014.

Amazingly, Samidare was out of the infirmary today. Akashi ended up having to assure me no less than three times throughout the day that Samidare was back in fighting condition, so I feel kinda bad for not believing her. I just thought with a terrible wound like that, she'd be in there for at least a month. Then again, ship girls aren't exactly normal human beings now, are they. But hey, can't blame me, 'cause I see them as normal human beings just like anyone else. I would feel downright dirty if I saw them as anything else.

So here's the big ol' plot twist: today's email from HQ basically told me that if we could make a breakthrough in Sector B through an assault mission, we would receive more ship girls to be stationed at base. In fact, whoever wrote the email put something like a PS at the end and told me that that's the best chance I would have at receiving more ship girls, to show HQ that we can make tangible progress in figuring out and one day conquering Sector B so that it won't pose a problem to international overseas shipping security. Other than these big news, today was pretty ordinary, run-of-the-mill kinda day. Paperwork, reports, emails, mission planning and deployment, what have you.

I gathered _everyone _in my office today for mission debriefing. Keep in mind, the room that I chose to be my office is actually pretty big, I think its maximum capacity's supposed to be like forty or so people, so it's not some dinky bedroom or whatever, so literally I can have everyone at base right now come into my office and we'd still have ample space for more. Anyways, I called _everyone _except for the cooking ladies (Mamiya and Irako) and explained the situation to them, about our objective. The email didn't exactly say if I had a time restraint on this or anything, but because of my own work ethic and habit, I believe in getting shit done as quickly and efficiently as possible, so obviously my intention was, now that Samidare was fully healed, to send _everyone _with the exception of Ooyodo and Akashi, since they don't have their own armaments or are outfitted properly enough to fight, to gain more ship girls as possible. I mean, this base has plenty of more space to hold more occupants; and seeing that any one of my ship girls can get screwed like Samidare was even if I send out my full force now, having more ship girls at hand would mean I would be able to send out bigger task forces and thus increase the chances that everyone comes back home safely. So I asked if there was anyone who was particularly against my plan of sending everyone out today.

No one was. Surprising, usually I'd always have a few dissenters who didn't agree with me whenever I did open polls like this among my own men.

Therefore, I sent out _everyone. _Even Houshou, because technically she, too, is a light carrier and can fight. Before I sent them off, I pulled Sazanami, Fubuki, Murakmo, and Inazuma aside and ordered them to specifically protect Houshou. The thought of someone like Houshou getting heavily damaged like Samidare was is literally cancer to my brain.

So yeah, today was just a really boring day for me since I'm stuck here at base. I didn't really know what to do, because there wasn't really as much paperwork and reports that I needed to do for today, so I ended up finishing those a good hour and a half faster than I expected, so I just lounged around for a bit in my office with EDM blasting through my stereos and surfing Youtube. I didn't have the heart to go back to my room and act like a damn shut-in (hikkikomori, I think they say in Japanese?) by finishing Saints Row 3 (still need to get to Saints Row 4), so I ended up going over to the mess hall to go talk to Mamiya and Irako since I was bored, but I didn't find them there. After wandering around a bit, wondering where they could've went, I heard hammers clunking from Houshou's izakaya site and found the two of them working on the izakaya, so I joined them in the construction. As thanks, they treated me to some excellent gyoza, or dumplings, I think they're called in English, some of the best I've ever had. Homemade cooking is so much fucking better than the shit you buy at restaurants, oh my God.

After that, I retreated back to my own room to continue on with my progress on watching through Oreimo and Aoki Hagane no Arpeggio. I would leave my opinions on anime here but since this journal's intended for my military experiences here, I'll refrain from indulging in the dissemination of my personal opinions on things that have no relevancy in this journal. Though, I might add, it's tempting to break that rule. Batsubyou found his way into my room again - I usually leave my door closed against the hinges but not entirely closed, so I guess the cat doesn't have too much trouble pushing it open and making itself at home on my bed. Why, Batsubyou, do you think my bed is your home? Error's gonna get pissed at me, you know. Silly cat.

But thank God everyone came back safe. No one even got scratched. Apparently all the enemies they ran into were just low-tier destroyers today, and they wiped out a whole ton of 'em, so I'm just gonna say that they all did a good job today. As the report turns out, they actually managed to penetrate about five miles into Sector B, which is pretty damn impressive for pulling that off and still coming back with the biggest injury on the team being Souryuu with a light bump on the ankle from an explosion that sent a small piece of shrapnel her way, fortunately not piercing the skin but just slapping against her ankle on the flat side. Kirishima assured me that their lack of injuries today was due to the fact that they had all learned their mistakes in their last expedition together, the mission in which Samidare got heavily damaged, and today was their fruits of their learned lessons from combat.

But the most important loot from today's mission was the information they got. They had mapped the waters where they had crossed into Sector B territory, analyzed frequency of enemy presence and enemy movements, among various other military intel and logistics info. Basically, it's info that HQ over in Tokyo can convert into sample data and get a more accurate picture of what's going on throughout the rest of Sector B. The post-action mission report today was more or less a damn gold mine of information, and as soon as I realized it, I hopped right back onto my laptop in my office and spent a whole hour organizing the info and sending it over to HQ. I swear to God, if they don't promise to get me some more ship girls after this, you _know _there's gonna be a muh'fuckin' riot up in this -

Anyways, by the time I was done sending the organized report to HQ and went over to the mess halls for dinner, the ship girls were all gathered there celebrating their more or less flawless run into Sector B. The girls invited me to go eat and drink with them, so I did, and it was a lot of fun. Strange, really, since I can barely speak Japanese fluently enough to carry a conversation and I haven't known any of them for more than a week and a half or so. But I mean, when girls like these are your subordinates, it's kinda hard to not have fun, since half of 'em have a tendency to just plain goof off.

After dinner, Kirishima pulled me aside and asked me if she could speak with me privately, so we went to my office for a chat. When I asked her what was up, she asked me some stuff in regards to the email from earlier this morning. She asked me if it said in the email whether it was mentioned I could consciously choose the ship girls I wanted HQ to send over - in other words, basically a direct request. I showed her the email, and sure enough, there wasn't any mention of me being able to tell HQ exactly which ship girls I wanted. I asked Kirishima why she wanted to know this, and she answered that if the email had said specifically that I could request certain ship girls to be deployed to our base, she was planning on asking me if I could request her ship sisters.

That's when I realized that basically all of my ship girls all have sister ships (ship sisters? how do I say that?) who still haven't been deployed here. I don't even know if they've met each other before outside of this base.

I confessed to Kirishima that I was a bit on the ignorant side of things when it came to knowing the ships of the old Imperial Japanese Navy, which the ship girls are based off. She said that she just wanted to have all her older sisters come to base - Kongou, Hiei, and Haruna - and literally, that would be all she would ever want. If I could procure them to be deployed to Okinawa, she wouldn't regret even being sent out on a suicide mission. I told Kirishima to try not to raise any death flags around me, because that would make me feel like a sick fuck.

But after Kirishima left my office after we had that conversation, I just kept sittin' in my office, wondering about that. Like, damn, if you think about it, ships that're in the same class together _technically _are like siblings, right? 'Cause they're part of the same class? So if that's the case, while I don't really know a whole lot in regards to the specifics of the Imperial Japanese Navy, I at least know that there were a _lot _of ships that were classified under the same class-type, and there were hardly really any ships that were alone in their own categories or class-types.

I don't know how many ship girls there were in the IJN, but I'm just gonna say that there's a lot. Which means that if I get new ship girls, there could be a chance that a couple of 'em would end up being the only ones of their respective class-types, meaning they still wouldn't have a fellow ship girl to call a sister, and if that's the case, they might(?) get lonely, and then morale will decrease, and they won't do their job properly, and then they'll slip up and make mistakes in battle, and then they'll get sunk or die, either or, whichever comes first -

Okay, I'll just...take a moment and stop before I become the next fucking Edgar Allen Poe and morbid myself to death.

But the point still remains that now that these "ships" now have human form, it's really hard to treat them as anything else. At least, I can't. Maybe, like I've mentioned before, I've got a mushy spot for 'em that I just don't know why it exists - I certainly wasn't particularly interested in girls back at home or always trying to get hook-ups and dates like a thirsty lil' fuckin' high school brat. Or, more believably, maybe now it's 'cause I know that every single one of my ship girls has at least one ship sister who isn't at base right now, and that in itself is not right and is something only I can fix because I'm their Admiral.

Well, we'll see in tomorrow's emails...see what HQ says.


	19. January 21st, 2014

Tuesday, January 21th, 2014.

Good news, the check cleared. It's fucking go time.

HQ processed the report that I sent them from yesterday's mission results and emailed me back saying that they've decided that we've made sufficient enough progress to warrant more reinforcements. We're due to receive them next Monday...an additional four destroyers, two light cruisers, a heavy cruiser, and a battleship.

Remembering the conversation that I had with Kirishima last night, I emailed them back asking them if I had the choice to specifically request certain ship girls from HQ. Unfortunately, they didn't respond back for the rest of the day, so I suppose I'll wait until tomorrow for a reply back.

Surprisingly, the rest of the ship girls took the news really well; they all seemed really happy that they'd get more reinforcements coming soon. I thought I was the only one who was going to get excited because I'd be able to field more task forces and do my job more efficiently with more ship girls, but when I nonchalantly told Takao about it, who's still my secretary, by the way, she seemed really excited about it too and ended up telling everyone else. Not surprisingly, Kirishima ran straight to my office as soon as she heard from Takao, slammed her hands on my office and stuck her face in mine and asked me if I could ask for her ship sisters. I tried to tell her as calmly as I could that I hadn't gotten a response back, and that by slamming her hands down on my desk, she basically pushed my desk about an inch into the floor.

She apologized a lot after that. Well, it's not like it bothers me, the fact that the desk is a bit lower than it should be and that it can't be moved anymore, at least not easily, but not gonna lie, I think I felt my balls retreat up my ass when I think about just how strong these girls are. I always forget that they aren't exactly...human, at least not in terms of physical strength.

So that got everyone super motivated to go out on more missions, so much so that every single one of them marched straight into my office at 1400 hours, which is usually the time when I give out mission duties, and asked me what today's mission was going to be. If you can imagine me staring like a dumbfuck at all the girls, except the ones who can't fight, obviously, with the daily mission profile in my hands that is now completely useless since I only designed it to be carried out by a task force of three destroyers, two light cruisers, and a standard carrier. I tried to tell them that I could only send out the ones that were specified in the mission profile that I had made, and besides, this was only going to be another reconnaissance mission, but they almost threatened not to go if I didn't send them all on today's mission.

Talk about a mutiny that doesn't make any fucking sense.

So I took another hour to revise today's mission plans so that I could send everyone. I warned everyone that it wouldn't be my fault at all if someone ended up getting hurt, though even as I said that, I knew that if someone did end up either getting heavily damaged like Samidare or even get sunk and killed, I'd still feel awful. So instead of a reconnaissance mission, this time, I issued them a search and destroy mission with the primary objective of defeating a Ru-Class or a Ta-Class battleship, an objective issued straight from HQ itself. I ran through their profiles and the info we currently have about them and told them that they're supposed to be really fucking dangerous, so I gave the whole proceed with extreme caution talk that I'm sure everyone who's spent at least a year in any military's heard more times than they've run miles in their lives. In order to ensure that everyone comes back home in one piece, I ordered them to assume defensive formations and focus on protecting each other more than damaging the enemy, and to not be afraid of retreating if someone needed to be saved by doing so. The secondary objective was to capture a live Ru-Class or Ta-Class specimen and bring it into base for interrogation, and from here it would be flown over to HQ for further analysis and research.

I sent them off at around 1600 hours. Mamiya, Houshou (who didn't go with them since she wasn't caught up in the whole battle fever thing), and Irako mentioned during breakfast that they were going to finish the rest of Houshou's izakaya, so after sending off the task force for today I went over to help them finish the rest. They had finished most of the handiwork for the izakaya yesterday, so we just put in the finishing touches, decorative stuff and organizing plates and silverware and setting up the tables and the chairs for the bar. Honestly, the ladies made the place cozy as fuck. It practically feels like a chill nightclub but in an Oriental setting, if that makes any sense at all. It's super easy for me to imagine the girls all gathered in the izakaya, chilling out, drinking some sake or something, eating some soba, and having a good time. Houshou decided to name her izakaya "Shinsengumi", which I think translates to "The New Battalion" or something like that. Mind you, my translation skills are meager, to say the least, so I could be totally wrong about that. But I guess it _kinda _makes sense, seeing that our little platoon here hasn't been in existence for too long - barely a few weeks old. In any case, I like the name. Don't know why, I just do.

In celebration of the finishing of Shinsengumi, Houshou decided to treat us all to some ramen that she had been practicing making specifically for the izakaya once it got finished and opened. She called it "Hakata" ramen, and what that means I have no clue, but I do know that it's the best fucking ramen I've ever had. Never again shall I poison my body with that shit known as instant ramen or cup ramen, the food that I wore on my shirt with the words "Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner". With ramen like this at my disposal, I don't need any other kinds of ramen. In fact, I can _live _on it. I can _live _on that shit. I can fucking _live _on Hakata ramen, that's how good it is.

I kinda ate so much that I ruined dinner for myself, but if I were in America, this's the part where I go on Twitter and tweet #worth. Well, then again, you don't have to be in America only to use Twitter. I don't even have a Twitter. So much for social networking.

As soon as I finished binging on ramen, the task force returned to base at around 2130 hours. Unfortunately, while no one got heavily damaged, some of the girls came back with some pretty bad wounds - Souryuu's arms got ripped up pretty badly, so much so that I instinctively cringed when I first saw her bloody arms. Some of the destroyers had blood splattered all over them, and worst of all, Kitakami lost her left hand from around half her upper arm down. Ooi was bawling by the time they came back to base, even though Kitakami kept telling her to calm down, that Akashi would be able to build her a new hand to replace the one she lost. For the most part, everyone got injured in some way or other, but at least no one ended up like Samidare. Ironically, Samidare was the least wounded one and got away with only a bit of shrapnel in her shoulder.

Even still, after getting patched up a bit over at Akashi's, everyone gathered at Shinsengumi like I'd imagined and celebrated the izakaya's grand opening together. Since I already ate a whole lotta ramen, I just joined in on the drinking, even ordering a bit of sake as well. As someone who's not used to drinking with other people and just drinking in general, it was pretty fun. I always knew alcohol was more of a social thing than just something you do by yourself, but I guess now I really know that it is. Though, it was kinda sketchy having to carry Kirishima back to her dorm because she went a little too hard on the sake. Turns out she's a lightweight, which is kinda surprising seeing that I'd imagine battleships would be heavyweights when it came to alcohol.

I left a bit early from the party though to prevent myself from being force-fed alcohol, since I saw some of the girls getting quite tipsy and feeding each other alcohol (Ooi and Kitakami, specifically), and while as a man I would've liked to keep watching, for the sake of my job I got the hell outta Dodge. And while I've never drank enough alcohol to know if I'm a lightweight or not myself, I get headaches easily from drinking, so either way, I would've gotten outta there. I spent the rest of the evening after compiling the post-mission report and sending it over to HQ sitting in my room and watching Expelled from Paradise. About half an hour into the movie, i heard a knock on my door, so I paused the movie and went to answer it, and it was Fubuki. She said that she wanted to talk to me about the same thing that Kirishima did, the whole requesting her fellow ship sisters part. Fubuki said that she hadn't seen Shirayuki, one of her ship sisters that apparently she'd been close with before she got transferred to Okinawa with me, in a long time, so she wanted me to request her so that she could see Shirayuki again.

Lemme guess, this's gonna turn out so that I just end up taking everyone's requests, huh. Well, since I don't really know the ships of the old Imperial Navy, it's not like I know which ship girl is supposed to be good or anything like that, like, this isn't some sorta motherfuckin' game. So if my request to HQ does end up being accepted, now that I think about it, I may as well go around base and ask everyone who they'd like me to request and just send that over.

Fubuki saw that I was watching a movie on my computer and asked me what I was watching. When I told her that I was watching Expelled from Paradise, her eyes lit up like some lights on a blinking Christmas tree and asked me if she could watch it with me, but immediately she realized that that wasn't proper behavior with which to address her superior and quickly tried to renege on her words, but I said that if she wanted, we could watch it together. I asked Fubuki when she'd be able to watch a movie, because besides my laptop in the office and my PC in my dorm, there weren't any other computers at base, and my subordinates can't touch my possessions as protocol, meaning that there'd be no way that Fubuki would be able to watch any anime or movie unless I allowed the girls to go on break or vacation to the mainland. Fubuki timidly asked me if I would allow her, and I got the hunch that she was feeling all embarrassed entering her own commander's room, a guy's room, at that, and I told her that she could come in and watch the movie from the start with me if she wanted. I wasn't about to force her to watch a damn movie with me, that's fucked up. Sounds like a date rape, more than anything. I told her that I would try my best not to tell anyone else, and finally Fubuki gave in and watched the movie with me.

Man, now that I realize it, I'm keeping secrets already. Who woulda knew.

After we finished Expelled from Paradise, Fubuki and I spent a whole hour talking anime and stuff. Apparently Fubuki's pretty knowledgeable in her animes and stuff, too, that was surprising. I asked her how she was able to watch anime, and Fubuki said that back at HQ, before she got assigned to Okinawa, she had overheard some HQ employees talking about Hayate no Gotoku and searched it up on the internet on her computer when she was working as secretary there, and the rest was history. She's been trying to expand her experience with anime genres, because mostly she's been watching slice of life animes and more comedy or daily life animes, stuff like that. She got into Sword Art Online just before she got assigned here, and she's been missing her ability to clandestinely watch anime on her secretary computer at HQ while working, since there's unfortunately no computers here. So I told her that I could buy her a cheap laptop so that she could watch anime on it and share it with her dormmates so that they could all watch together at night or something, but Fubuki instantly refused. She reacted in the whole predictable manner that's shown in anime all the damn time, when someone gets shown some generosity and they instantly turn it down, saying that "they don't deserve it" or "I'm giving them too much", and that was basically Fubuki's reaction.

Gotta make a note to order a cheap Dell laptop or something off Amazon and leave it in their dorm as a really, _really _late Christmas present. Or it could even be a New Year's present, since it's customary to give younger people New Year's money (it's foreign to Americans, _generally speaking_, so I'll have to try real hard 'n remember that every time New Year's comes around. I'm just gonna do it just so that I see what kinda face Fubuki'll make when she realizes there's a brand new laptop sitting on her bed so that she can watch anime like she used to. Call it generosity, call it being nice to girls, call it whatever, but either way, I'm looking forward to getting a laugh outta Fubuki's reaction. Hopefully.

Before she left for her own dorms for the night, Fubuki asked me if I've ever wanted to be the protagonist of an anime or a story or something like that. Since she mentioned it, when I was younger, I had that whole chuuni thing that Japanese people call it, what, the pubescent tendency to think that you're a superhuman being or something and you do it 'cause you think it's cool? I dunno what it's really called in English. I sometimes think back to those years, when I was just a twelve year old, when Naruto was big and I thought I was a ninja. Embarrassing but makes for some pretty good hilarious stories, lemme tell ya. After that, I "evolved" from that to thinking I was a super badass gangbanger who wore shades everywhere (yes, even indoors) and wearing a bandana, pretending I could summon fire or some shit in my hands. Cracks me up every single time.

Fubuki said that with me being in the position that I am now, she said that she was kind of jealous of me, that I was occupying the main focus of attention here at base, because I'm the most important person here. So because of that, she sees me as a protagonist character, someone who calls the shots and leads the plot in accordance with his choices. I mean, for all I know, unless I'm breaking the fourth wall here, I tend to think that we're all in control of our own lives, that we're all main characters of our own lives, and that's what I told her. Doesn't matter what position we have in life or anything, nothing will change the fact that we're all more or less our own main characters. Besides, I told Fubuki that if either one of us was the main character, it would be her because she's got superhuman powers and strength, whereas I'm just an ordinary human who happens to be her commander and tells her what to do, nothing more. I mentioned that if anything, someone might end up making an anime of this whole Moebius Four Armament, like how Hollywood sometimes makes movies of formerly classified military sections and stuff like that, and that maybe Fubuki could be the main character of that. She just smiled and told me that she'd like that, even though she knew that probably wouldn't be the case. No one outside of the government and the Moebius Four Armament project would believe that there were such things as girls who were the embodiment of military seaborne vessels capable of mass destruction and wore sailor uniforms and looked like characters straight out of an anime.

I told Fubuki that I didn't believe girls like her could exist, but now I know that they do. If I can believe, so can the rest of the world. Then again, if the rest of the world knows about the ship girls, maybe that wouldn't be the best idea.

Oh God, Ooyodo just came in and told me that Takao drank a bit too much and threw up everywhere. Cleanup on Aisle Four...


	20. January 22nd, 2014

January 22nd, 2014.

Got a response email from HQ. Seriously, whoever works over there needs a pay raise, to be this on the ball about responding to my emails. Then again, it could just be that they're paying close attention to the Moebius Four Armament program as a whole.

So they said that they weren't sure if I was actually allowed to specifically request ship girls. They said that it was probably because high military command in mainland Japan still doesn't fully trust a fucking gaijin (foreigner) leading their secret weapons. Understandable, but doesn't change the fact that whoever made that decision is fucking retarded, but that's just my opinion.

I relieved Takao from her secretary position today and restored Ooyodo back to her original secretarial post. You can imagine how that went. Ooyodo was positively elated to be secretary again, and Takao was positively horrified to lose her post. Takao begged me not to strip her of her position, but seeing that she couldn't even get out of bed because she had such a bad hangover, it's not like I had a choice, I kinda need a secretary to handle some of the stuff that would otherwise make my office life a tad difficult. I told Takao in her dorm that she could consider this a punishment for going over the top and thinking drinking to get drunk was ever a good idea, especially on a goddamn weekday. I mean, I remember specifically mentioning to the girls that yesterday was a special occasion, so I was willing to make an exception in terms of celebrations, but obviously when they go girls gone wild and drink until they paint the floor all sorts of fugly shades of whatever colors that come from your stomach, I gotta pull out the law 'n order. And we JUST painted that floor too, that was one of the last things me and Irako did for the final touches to Shinsengumi. I do admit being pretty fucking salty over the fact that Takao ruined a bit of the paint coat, so much so that I ignored Mamiya and Houshou's requests to let Takao off the hook just this once. I mean, I guess I could have, but it still stands that Takao did drink irresponsibly, and as a member of the military, both professionally and personally, I don't condone Takao's choice to pull that one off.

Did I say that I stripped Takao of her position as secretary earlier? Shit, I did. Now I probably sound like a pervert. Eh, whatever, all guys are perverts at some point in their lives.

I'll try not to dwell on this for too long, but now that I kinda think about it, it's kinda funny how just a couple days ago, when I asked Takao to be my new secretary, she was all like, why should I be secretary, we don't even know each other all that well. But now, she's all like OH GOD PLEASE DON'T DO THIS TO ME! ! ! It's almost alarming how quickly some people change. I say almost, because there's a bit of a sadistic side to me that makes me wanna tease people, just a bit, and seeing Takao like that was...dare I say, somewhat gratifying. Now I just sound plain fucking creepy, so let's just stop right here.

So I actually went ahead and ordered a decent laptop that's on sale right now, apparently for like sixty or seventy percent off, something ridiculous like that. Ended up only being like fifty or sixty bucks, converted to US dollars. As an avid anime watcher myself, I know what it's like having to go months on deployment with no source of fresh anime or even electronic entertainment, so I wouldn't want that to happen to anyone else. The shipping is a bit sketch - shipping out to Okinawa is rough and unpredictable, but it shouldn't take too long. Hopefully.

For today's mission, I sent a task force consisting of Kirishima, Murakumo, Sazanami, Inazuman, and Imuya on another recon mission. I was gonna send out Ooi too, as a light cruiser escort for Kirishima, mainly, but Ooi was a bitch and refused to deploy because Kitakami's still waiting on a replacement hand that Akashi's been spending all day today working on. Kitakami apologized in Ooi's stead, for she had tried her best to convince Ooi to follow orders, but it seems that either she's too attached to Kitakami or that she's still very suspicious of me because I'm a dirty American. My fucking bad for being white, I suppose. Might actually be a combination of both, to be honest. In any case, Ooi ended up not deploying, and because I'm not used to subordinates disobeying my orders, it's still burning in my mind. I mean, technically, TECHNICALLY speaking, I can force the ship girls to obey my orders as stated in the Moebius Four Armament, but seeing that Ooi clearly looked like she wasn't taking any shit from me and knowing that she can snap my neck in half more easily than I can rip a piece of paper in half, I didn't press the point. That being said, I did take note of Ooi's refusal to obey orders, and I guarantee you that she's going to come to regret it one day. Might not be anytime soon, but something like that, as a superior officer, I can't let that one slide either. That's one of the few things I know I'll always be a hardass about, even with these girls: obey orders, no matter what.

Almost.

After sending them off, I went over to Shinsengumi, where I found Samidare sitting with Fubuki at the bar eating some Hakata ramen, which was also why I went there in the first place. The girls were alarmed to see me come in, because technically Shinsengumi isn't actually supposed to be open at that particular time of the day, and as you might expect, the two of them started to apologize profusely. I told them to chill, that since I was also here to grub out on some ramen, it would be hypocritical for me to apprehend them for an offense I myself was about to commit. So we spent an hour all eating Hakata ramen and drinking Ramune. Absolutely amazing.

While we were eating, Samidare asked me if I was seriously going to buy Fubuki a computer to watch anime on, much to Fubuki's deep chagrin, so much so that Fubuki was about to burst into tears because that was supposed to be a secret. Apparently Fubuki accidentally let it slip to Samidare that I was talking about buying her a laptop, and she hadn't told Samidare to keep it on the down-low. I replied almost right away that I already bought one and that it should be on its way shortly. Both Fubuki and Samidare gasped real loud, and Houshou, who was standing nearby secretly eavesdropping on us, started giggling. I quickly told them that I wasn't about to buy everyone new personal laptops, so those two started thanking me over and over to the point where I became uncomfortable. Geez, it's so weird having to deal with these girls sometimes...

The two destroyers asked me what life was like in America, a question that I was honestly surprised I wasn't asked a lot, lot sooner than this. So I went on a real long schpiel about living in America was like...the schools, the people I grew up with, the fun times the bad times, family, and the lot.

Understandably, because they don't really have family themselves, they asked me about my own family. I noticed Houshou was listening quite keenly at this part too.

So I told them about my family, my mishaps and grudges with my parents, and how outside of comrades in the military, I didn't really have friends or whatever. Military drains all of my time, anyway, and when you're a lieutenant like me, especially one whose parents are both high-rankers in other branches of the US military, friends tend to be pretty fucking rare. Clearly the girls wanted to hear happy-go-lucky, blissful family stories that they thought all humans have, so I almost feel bad for letting their hopes down.

They asked me if I didn't like my parents or something, because I didn't exactly flatter them. I told them that it wasn't so much hate that I felt towards them as it was just a feeling of indifference. Their positions in life affected my life in ways no one could really control, but that being said, I still can't help but feel bitter that I was more or less forced into this position that I'm in now rather than work my own way into a life I could call my own.

Samidare quietly asked me if that meant that I resented them, if I resented being here. I told them quickly that it wasn't specifically the girls I was angry at, just at how things unfolded. She asked me if I was telling the truth, and I told them that if I was lying, they wouldn't even have to ask me to know.

I would've liked to talk more, but then I realized just how much time had passed and needed to go and actually get some work done. I took care of some paperwork and finished them just in time to welcome back the task force.

Kirishima and Murakumo, this time, were both heavily damaged. Murakumo was unconscious and had to be towed to base with both arms missing and a broken left knee, and Kirishima completely lost an eye and came back with a 16cm cannon shell impaled in her chest, and thank God it didn't explode, otherwise Kirishima would be back down on the seafloor...a second time. The others didn't fare much better either. Everyone had some sort of horrible wound.

Remember how I wrote earlier that I would do something that would make Ooi regret not going on today's mission? As it turns out, good ol' Re-class came along and did that job for me. After making sure that Akashi and Ooyodo were at the infirmary fixing up Kirishima and Murakumo, I walked by the dorms and overheard Kitakami yelling at Ooi for not going with them and possibly preventing their comrades from taking that much damage. I didn't hear Ooi say a single thing back, and I didn't hang around to see if she would say anything. After that, I went back to my office and emailed an emergency report describing the situation, along with the post-action mission report that Sazanami turned in in place of Kirishima, whom I had designated flagship for today's recon mission.

I barely had the motivation to fucking write this knowing that two of my girls're in the infirmary about three inches away from crashin' and burnin', so there sure as hell won't be a mission tomorrow with our only battleship barely alive. Not to undermine Murakumo at all, but we need Kirishima. Call me McClellan, but from here on out I'm only sending the girls on missions when everyone's participating.


	21. January 23rd, 2014

Thursday, January 23rd, 2014.

Why do I keep forgetting to write the goddamn day at the beginning?

So I'm writing this while being super fucking salty. Lots and lots of things happened today, most of them being not good. And whenever I get fucked by a ton of things that go wrong or just plain suck, I just group them up into one convenient bundle that I like to call "bad luck" and just sulk quietly to myself. I mean, I'm not trying to be a whiny little bitch, because to be honest, I hate those kinds of people (probably since I'm in the military, where we don't believe in cheese and whine and instead go out and do shit to fix our problems or just deal with them) and would rather not become one of them myself. But honestly, even as I say that, you gotta realize that everyone's gotta just blow off steam a few times a year 'cause it's not like every day's gonna be a perfect day. All I'm saying's that today was particularly rough, and I still haven't gotten over it. Once I get to sleep and wake up, I'll be back to normal, but seriously, today was fucking annoying.

So for the important shit first: I had to skip breakfast today to assist Error and Akashi with the surgeries that Murakumo and Kitakami needed for whatever limbs they're missing, so that was incredibly fun. And by fun, I mean tiring as fuck. I thought I wouldn't be doing much, but turns out that Akashi couldn't really perform these surgeries by herself and really needed extra hands to go around helping her and stuff, and because everyone else was busy with training, drills, and whatnot, literally Error and I were the only ones who were available to do anything at all. So anyway, here I was thinking I wouldn't really have to do much, but I end up standing and walking around for about five hours from morning until early afternoon, just past lunch, using medical tools and generally helping Akashi.

I feel bad for writing that, because for as much as I'm bitching here, Akashi didn't even say anything. She's the real MVP, if I so must make some dank memes here. Five hours hunched over Murakumo's arms, deftly reattaching them together for hours on end. And as soon as we were done with Murakumo's surgeries, she just tossed aside her bloody plastic gloves, put on another, and said "Next!" Jesus, and here I was thinking that I knew that they weren't human, but Akashi's dogged endurance is fuckin' something else. I guess I could put it this way, that both of us were holding in our complaints about the hard work and strenuous operations, but we knew that we could have all the time in the world to bitch and complain after the surgeries were done. Do work now, bitch later if you need to bitch. Error, too. I thought she wouldn't want to work with me, but she did everything Akashi and I told her to do. Get that tool, hold this in place, do this, that. You'd think that looking at girls like Akashi and Error that they'd do nothing but complain and whine for the entire time. And I'm not saying that because they actually would, no. See, you've gotta understand, back when I was going to school, the average high school female student would basically whine and moan, asking why they had to do what they had to do. I mean, guys weren't exempt from this generalization either, but it was more so girls than guys. No, not Akashi or Error. Not a single word out of them other than what they had to say to make the surgeries today successes. And because of that, I've gained a lot more respect for Akashi and Error, I really do.

But after that, I sent Akashi and Error on break. Meanwhile, I couldn't eat - not just yet, anyway. I had to first do all my shit that I'd normally get done in the morning - paperwork, reports faxed and emailed from HQ, and whatever. Ooyodo had already filled out all the superfluous papers that I didn't really need to look at and organized the essential papers into one neat pile on my desk so I could get started on them right away as soon as I got back, which I did.

Now, mind you, this part's gonna sound a bit surprising, 'cause I know I was really caught off guard by this, and honestly, I think this's the one moment today that got me on tilt for the rest of the day. So Houshou comes into my office a little bit after I get to work on what was supposed to be my morning work, and she asks me to come eat lunch at least before getting to work. I politely decline, right? I just tell her, "Sorry, Houshou-san, this was needed to have been done in the morning and it's already very late as it is, so I need to keep doing this." Houshou insisted, but I still turned her down, 'cause, for fuck's sake, work is work. Food can wait, but work can't. So I spend the next two and a half hours or so getting all that shit done.

Here, before going further, I wanna at least mention HQ's email for today, which was really interesting, and I'm going to take it as good news for us: after they processed my report from yesterday basically explaining how my task force from yesterday more or less got completely rekt, they told me that they've decided to go ahead and send us some construction supplies to build an on-base dockyard, which they explained in the email that in reality, it wasn't really a "dockyard", but just a really big bathhouse. Apparently the logic here's that we're gonna build this showerhouse (but they won't be sending any actual personnel to help us build it, big surprise there), and the water's going to be a special kind of water that's filled with nano-bot particles that'll help repair the wounds that the ship girls'll have after battle. While it's good news that now the girls'll have a fast and efficient way of healing their wounds a lot faster than before, it still means I'm gonna have to look forward to spending what would be my hours off for the day and weekends to construct this thing. Goddamn it.

The second thing they mentioned in the email was that I am allowed permission to specifically request ship girls. The problem with this, according to HQ, is that it's up to their jurisdiction first whether they'll let said requested ship girl to be deployed to Okinawa. So basically, if they say "Oh, we still need this ship girl here" or "Oh, that ship girl you want still needs more training or is vital to our operations here", they won't send her and instead just send me someone else. At least, that's what I gathered from what the email said. I guess I'll have to explain that to Fubuki and Kirishima - well, after Kirishima comes to after the surgery, 'cause neither she nor Murakumo woke up all day today. Hopefully tomorrow, though.

The third thing in the email was that HQ wants me to compile a comprehensive overview report on the Moebius Four Armament, intended for the United States Government. Now, allow me to explain to you the absolute retardedness of this order. First of all, the Moebius Four Armament's been a clandestine joint-military agreement and operation that's been negotiated and worked on by both nations for a long time, at least more than a couple years, to my knowledge. So given this info, you'd think that this's been thoroughly explained to both governments of each side of the program, right? Well, apparently the Federal Government to which I pledge allegiance didn't get the memo and wants Japan to send them a summary of what the fuck's exactly going on in Okinawa. I emailed a trusted associate 'a mine who used to serve in the same unit as I did about two years ago who now pushes pencils in the Pentagon to try 'n get to the bottom of what the hell's behind this order, and he got back to me just a little while ago that it's mainly a few high-ranking Admirals in our Navy who apparently weren't aware of the Moebius Four Armament program when they were called to a meeting by Mr. President and demanded an explanation, and seeing that jolly ol' Mr. President's gonna find himself with his arm up his ass if he doesn't do what those dear Admirals want, I get to spend a night working on a comprehensive summary about the good ol' Moebius Four Armament.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuucckkkk this.

So anyway, after all the paperwork got done, by this point, you gotta realize that I'm really hungry. Haven't eaten all day, no breakfast or lunch so far, and all I did today was work, work, work, and I wanna take a break and go catch up on the anime that I've still got backlogged, but I still need to organize task force management for missions for the rest of this week after today. I went over to the mess halls, and I found Houshou there. I asked her if there's any leftover food from lunch, and you know what she does?

She fucking put a single small bowl of cold rice in front of me.

Now, usually, meals consist of a bowl of rice, some miso soup, maybe a couple different side dishes here 'n there. Me being an American who isn't used to that kind of meal, it was kinda rough getting used to eating a meal so simple, but you know, I just got used to it over time.

_But a single motherfucking bowl of rice is kinda...yeah, um, not enough, maybe?_

I looked up at Houshou when she gave me that small bowl of rice with a confused look at first. She knew what I was going to ask, 'cause as soon as I asked her where the rest of the food was, she said,

"If you wish to complain, then please get back to work."

...what?

I remember staring at her for a good five minutes. I was that stunned and had no clue what to say or even how to react. Like, at first I was like, did I do something to piss off Houshou? Did I do something wrong in general that she didn't approve of? Er, I don't think so...right?

So then I was like, "Um...Houshou-san, I'm the Admiral."

And then Houshou's like, "Yes, I understand, Teitoku (Japanese for Admiral, even though technically I'm not even of an Admiral rank, just a Commander), but no matter what your position, it is important to partake in meals. Meals are an important part of Japanese culture. If you do not understand this, then what I am doing might seem questionable to you, but please, it is important to take care of yourself."

At the time, I was too pissed off to really pay attention to her words. When she said that to me, I was just thinking to myself something along the lines of "Oh boy, I dunno what the fuck's goin' on here, but I think it's a good time to leave, yeaaaaahhh..." And that's exactly what I did. I just shook my head a bit, and I cleared right the fuck out. My logic at the time was that if I was gonna eat a bowl of rice for lunch, I may as well just pig out at dinner and not even bother wasting my time with eating only something like a bowl of rice.

But obviously now that I've got some time to think and reflect back on what happened today, what Houshou did wasn't intended to be mean or offensive, it's just how they do things here. And now that I think back, I've always eaten meals with everyone else during the appropriate mealtimes. Today was the only day so far that I really didn't eat with everyone else. That being said, I don't know if Akashi or Error even ended up eating any lunch like me either. Maybe they did, I dunno, but I won't hold it against them if Houshou fed them properly or whatever. I'm just still really salty that Houshou treated me like that. Of course, I never explained to her what I was doing the entire day, so maybe that could've done me some good, explaining some shit to her. But at the time, I was just so fucking pissed off that I really didn't feel like I was in the mood to explain anything. It was just so random to me and uncalled for that I just lost my appetite right then and there. Really irritating, and out of respect for Houshou, I won't call her out on it, but I really hope this doesn't happen again. I know that there's obviously a few cultural differences here that I'm not getting, but still, that just - ugh. Fucking pisses me off.

So the rest of the day didn't fare any better. I went back to my office and started writing up the missions for the rest of the week, including starting on making the comprehensive report for the US Government about the Moebius Four Armament (seriously, why can't they just get the people who negotiated the agreement with the Japanese government to write this damn thing). Back in America, we have this little saying that goes "when it rains, it pours" or people just mention something like the snowball effect, where when one thing goes wrong, suddenly it feels like everything else that can possibly go wrong does go wrong. Japan probably has a proverb or saying like that too. Well, that's kinda what happened for the rest of the day, to be honest. My pen exploded on me while I was almost done drafting the mission plans and had to end up writing it all over from scratch because the paper got ruined from the sheer amount of ink that got spewed out, Batsubyou knocked over a cup of tea that Samidare served me when he jumped up onto my desk where he likes to sit and made me go change into civilian clothes because my American officer's uniform's the only military uniform I have on me right now, and when dinner time came around, I put my tray on the edge of a table to go get another pair of chopsticks, and when I came back to pick up the tray, my fingers slipped from a bad grip and ended up breaking the miso soup bowl. I'm pretty sure that the girls knew something was going wrong with me, since that's the first time I've ever sworn out loud in English when I broke the bowl. Houshou didn't seem particularly happy either, and I gave her a pretty mean glare when she came over to hand me a handbroom to clean up the pieces and snatched them out of her hands, so that probably got on Houshou's nerves too. Normally, during dinnertime, some girls would hang out with me, talk with me and eat dinner together with me and stuff, but after that, well, guess what, I get to eat dinner alone.

I might as well have gone around the entire day with a piece of paper taped to my back that says #gotrekt.

So yeah, that's my one excuse to be a whiny little bitch for this year. Hopefully I won't ever have to go full bitch mode ever again.

When it rains, it pours...yeah, no wonder I fucking hate the rain.


	22. January 24th, 2014

Friday, January 24th, 2014.

This morning was particularly difficult in terms of getting myself to wake up and get out of bed. Probably the after-effects of all that bath salt that I dumped myself with after the horrible debacles of the day before. You know how some food and drinks leave a really, really bad after-taste when you consume them? For me, I know that certain teas and mint in particular have really bad after-tastes - well, mint is kinda weird 'cause it's not that I hate the taste or flavor of mint, it's just that I get really irritated by the fact that it lingers in my mouth for so damn long. That's kinda why I always tend to steer away from mint gum and mint products, unless it's toothpaste. I've been using mint toothpaste for so long that I just got used to it. But not gum. Don't think I'll ever get used to mint gum.

Though, because of what happened yesterday, it was kinda awkward having Houshou give me my breakfast when it was breakfast time at the mess hall. The whole incident with her yesterday still irked me, but it's like she wasn't aware of what had happened, so I just told myself to let it go - no point in itching old wounds and reopening them again. I just need to not miss mealtime - or just make my own damn food, which I can easily do. Come to think of it, I probably should have made my own food when that whole shit went down with Houshou, but at the time I was just pissed off and just went straight back to work since that was the only reasonable choice I thought I had at the time. But oh well, no reason to dwell on old shit now.

It was during breakfast time that I talked to Fubuki and told her what HQ had told me, about the whole ship girl request petition. Fubuki seemed pretty happy with the news, and she urged me to go ahead and request her ship sister Shirayuki, which I said I'd think about. It would really help if I had like a catalog or a roster with ship girls and their capabilities on them, so I'd be better able to make a reasonable call on who to request from a commander's standpoint.

After breakfast and before heading back to my office to get started on the usual morningtime paperwork, I visited the infirmary to check on Murakumo and Kirishima. Akashi greeted me as usual, but I could tell that she was still really tired from the surgeries that she had to perform. I informed her about the new dockyards we were going to construct on base, from the email that HQ had sent me, and that cheered Akashi way up, because apparently, this means that it'll decrease her workload significantly, especially for moderate wounds like Kitakami's severed hand or things like that. Obviously for heavy wounds like the ones to the degree of those Kirishima, Murakumo, and Samidare all suffered, she'd still have to treat and operate on significantly, but instead of taking a few days or up to a week for them to recover, with the new dockyards and nano-bot bathwater, they'll at most take a day. Around sixteen hours tops for aircraft carriers, according to Akashi. So I guess that's an incentive to get started as quickly as possible on these new baths once supplies and plans come in, whenever they'll come in, anyway.

Murakumo was still sleeping when I came to visit her and Kirishima, but thankfully Kirishima was awake. Kirishima tried to sit up and salute, but 'cause she couldn't because of her surgery, I told her to relax and refrain from saluting me until she was fully recovered. She apologized right away for getting herself heavily damaged, and I told her that it was okay, so long as everyone had come back alive. I told her about HQ's email about the ship girl requesting, and Kirishima understood. She told me to request her ship sisters Kongou, Haruna, and Hiei if I could. Any one of them would do, according to her, so I guess I'll have to keep that in mind.

Error came in while I was working during the morning with some tea for me. Simple green tea, but it's my favorite tea 'cause it's so simple to make and great to drink. She told me that since Batsubyou had knocked over my glass of tea yesterday, she was making amends and wanted me to drink it, so I accepted. If there's one drink that I can drink forever, it's green tea. You can have it cold, warm, hot, whatever to fit your fancy. Well, maybe that and barley tea. Those two teas are awesome. I would gladly trade in all the sodas and sugary drinks that I could get in America for simple teas like barley and green tea. So much for being American, I suppose.

Ooyodo at one point during the morning asked me about my uniform, if I didn't want to wear the Japanese-issued white naval officer uniform. I told her that unfortunately, she was right. I didn't really feel like wearing it 'cause it would be weird for me. Wearing a Japanese uniform when clearly I'm an American, working for the American military and navy. But then again, it's like, well, I'm on Japanese territory, commanding Japanese ship girls, speaking Japanese. So what the hell should I do? Damned if I do, damned if I don't. In the end, I just decided to keep wearing my own uniform, but not with the intent of portraying a rebellious or anti-Japanese sentiment. Just what was comfortable with me. Ooyodo understood and apologized for asking me something so personal. Seriously, what's with these girls and apologizing for asking questions like that? I thought they'd be asking questions like that nonstop.

I sent HQ another email with more questions regarding the whole requesting ship girls thing, and to my big surprise, they practically responded almost right away with a PDF attachment that lists all ship girls that've - er, no, _who've _- been constructed so far and told me to pick from that roster. It was really interesting, but I only had to skim through it since I needed to get back to work. I saved it for later, and I read through it just earlier before writing this entry, so I'll talk about the roster a bit later on.

For today's mission, I sent everyone out again, this time including Houshou. It shouldn't be a surprise that I felt less guilt sending out Houshou, for obvious reasons. Again, today was a reconnaissance mission, this time, though, to the eastern waters of Sector B. This time, however, I told them to retreat immediately if they sighted any battleship-class Abyssal ship or any vessel of equivalent strength or greater. Until we get those reinforcements next Monday, I won't risk having casualties inflicted on my fleet like what happened to Samidare, Murakumo, and Kirishima.

After sending everyone off, I began work on the comprehensive report of the Moebius Four Armament Program. I'll provide a copy of it in this journal for future reference as well once I'm finished - I mean, may as well, right. Thing is, now that I've started working on it, it doesn't feel like it'll take me a long time or much effort, since I've already been briefed heavily about this program enough to make me acquainted with what I should expect about being here and all. So I guess it wasn't as bad as I thought. But the bitterness about just having to do it in the first place still pisses me off. Fucking Americans, because it's always okay to be racist towards your own nationality, right? I'm white, so who the fuck cares if I start calling other white people crackers, they don't give a damn. No one takes self-derogatory racist remarks seriously, anyways. And especially if you're American, it seems like dissing Americans is like a new international fad or something, so bonus points 'cause no one gives a shit about Americans. Kappa.

Speaking of Kappa, I do admit to having a couple Twitch streams open while working in the morning...it seems like the ship girls don't really understand the whole concept of streaming and the more recent online social media phenomena, 'cause Ooyodo didn't understand what was going on when she noticed it. Well, I mean, better to keep it that way, I guess. But it's definitely tough watching streams that I used to watch 'cause I'm about eight or nine hours' difference from everyone else. That being said, for stuff like Starcraft streams like Proleague and the GSL, it's perfect 'cause they usually air at around 6 in the evening, sometimes at three in the afternoon for certain qualifiers, so in that respect it's been awesome being able to watch them at reasonable times and not having to either wake up ridiculously early at five in the morning or staying up until then just to watch some high-level Starcraft. First world problems, heh.

This afternoon wasn't really that eventful, seeing that I sent everyone off on sortie and I was spending most of the afternoon getting as much done of the comprehensive report as I could.

Except for one thing. Mamiya entered my room to give me a plate of freshly cut apple slices, which was a real treat because I love apples, and I honestly didn't expect to get any here at base (at least, not any time soon). You can imagine my face when I realized what Mamiya was holding as she entered my office, so I'm super grateful to Mamiya for being so damn considerate. But as it turned out, the apples were only an excuse for Mamiya to talk to me about what happened between me and Houshou. She had noticed our icy exchange earlier this morning and wondered if there was something going on between us, and it had concerned her so much so that she decided to come and ask me directly. I asked her why she didn't just go and ask Houshou about what happened instead, and she replied that she already had, but Houshou wouldn't say anything, that it wasn't a big deal and needed no further attention. Understandable reaction.

So I told her what had happened yesterday. The whole incident about her giving me a single small bowl of cold rice and the part when I wasted dinner by spilling it accidentally onto the floor due to a simple mishap. I honestly told Mamiya what was going through my head and what I felt during those moments, how pissed off I got and how I reacted, shit like that. Mamiya looked positively shocked by what I said, and when I finished, she freakin' got on the ground and bowed to me, to my utter surprise. Like, what the fuck, why're you bowing to me all of a sudden!? Mamiya pleaded with me to forgive Houshou, that she just wanted me to become acclimated to Japanese culture and Japanese ways of life, that she wasn't doing all that to alienate me or anything. I told her to stop bowing because she was making me feel really, really, really uncomfortable, like Houshou actually did something wrong, which she didn't. It wasn't like there was any apology that needed to be made, I was just saying what had happened. I don't _think _I was talking as though I were trying to guilt-trip Mamiya or anyone, at least I'm pretty sure I don't think I did. I told Mamiya that I didn't harbor any true ill will towards Houshou and that whatever bitterness that I had from yesterday would disperse over time. I'm not one to hold grudges for very long anyway.

So it took a full half a fucking hour to convince Mamiya that I seriously didn't totally hate Houshou. Maybe it would've been a lot, lot better if I just told Mamiya that it wasn't a big deal like Houshou had told her. I don't know if Mamiya herself is just a really sensitive person, or if the reaction she gave me was the kind of reaction I ought to expect on a regular basis, not just from her. I just don't know. It seems like now that I've lived here at Okinawa for long enough, I'm beginning to notice the differences that come with living in a different country. People just...behave differently here, and I'm not really sure how to go about approaching them. And even if I try to act all polite and stuff, somewhere in the back of my head, there's always that annoying feeling that I'm doing something I'm not supposed to be. I just hope that there won't be any more of these, but even as I write this, I know that there's bound to be more and more incidents like this - more misunderstandings, more rising emotions, and more hours I've gotta waste sulking and being pissed off instead of doing my goddamn work and doing something actually productive.

But like I said, besides the talk with Mamiya, I just worked on the report all afternoon and into the evening until the task force came back, thankfully with no casualties, but most of them were really tired, so after dinner, basically all of them went straight to sleep, with the exception of Houshou, who still ran Shinsengumi even after coming back from a sortie. I decided to pay Houshou a visit, and when I got there, she welcomed me and invited me to the bar, where I just ordered a glass of Ramune. I know that normally I need to order alcohol or somethin' like that when I'm at a bar, but honestly, I don't feel it. I reserve drinking for proper times, not when I'm alone.

I asked Houshou why she was still running Shinsengumi when it was clear that no one was gonna come by and order anything, and Houshou said that you never knew for sure if someone was going to come in for something, like me, Akashi, Ooyodo, Mamiya, or Irako. And besides, Houshou said that just because she was tired from a sortie didn't mean that she automatically had the luxury to slack off and not operate her izakaya that I was gracious enough to give her permission to build and had helped her build. She said that it would be wasting everyone's efforts that had gone into constructing it, and more importantly, my decision to make it a reality in the first place, for without my consent, Shinsengumi wouldn't even exist for the enjoyment of everyone at base.

I just told Houshou that she was giving me too much credit. Those were just words - actions speak louder than words, surely. I valued our actions more than my own words, so how could that possibly make sense?

But this's where I remember our conversation quite distinctly, 'cause it's only been an hour or so since then:

"Teitoku, perhaps that was how you lived in America. I am aware that in America, people value actions much more than words. But here in Japan, that is not necessarily always the case. Certainly there are situations in which actions do speak louder than words. But there are also times when words are just as important as actions. We take words very seriously. Simply saying that words mean nothing means that you are not being considerate towards the context - by saying that your words are negligible, you are undermining your own authority as our Teitoku. And should you keep doing so, the other ship girls will take it as a cue to stop following your orders because they think you are not taking your own job seriously. Do you understand?"

"Yeah, well, I get that, but I'm just saying that...that you guys put in the real effort to actually building it. My words alone didn't build this place, right?"

"Perhaps not, but your words gave us the will to build Shinsengumi. And for that, I thank you. The Ramune is on the house, Teitoku."

"Er...you don't have to do that, I can just pay - "

"No, it is also as part of my apology for my behavior yesterday after lunch. Mamiya-san came in earlier today and talked to me about that incident, and just earlier when I returned from our sortie, she informed me about the conversation you had with her whilst we were away."

"Oh...well, shit..." (I was facepalming and feeling really bad right around here)

"I, too, was having a rough day yesterday. Several things went wrong here with the izakaya, and I had cut my finger while making lunch yesterday." (She showed me the bandage that she put around her middle finger) "For that, I am terribly sorry and wish to apologize. Someone like me...I should not have acted so foolishly towards my own superior like that."

Houshou went on to ask if I wanted to give her some kind of punishment for her disorderly conduct for yesterday, which completely baffled me. Who the fuck in their right mind would _voluntarily _ask for punishment? So obviously I refused, saying that I saw no reason for there to be any punishment of any kind. since all parties were more or less at fault. Houshou just smiled at me and asked me why not. I asked her if she was a masochist. She immediately said no and to stop making weird conclusions. I apologized straight away.

I told her that I'd given enough punishments throughout my military career as an Army and Navy officer in the American military. Sometimes it was warranted, but most times I had to issue punishments or other such orders, it wasn't really what I'd call _fun_. I'm not a sadist or a sick fuckjob, so watching a guy get flogged twenty times or stickin' someone in the slammer (solitary confinement unit) weren't the most glorious aspects of my job. Plus, the other soldiers would get pissed off at _me, _when lots of times it wasn't even me who determined the kind of punishment, I was only the friggin' messenger boy. I told Houshou that honestly, I was sick and tired of giving punishments for the stuff my subordinates did wrong and instead wanted to give rewards for things they did well or they did right. Constantly punishing people constructs a sort of pseudo-system of fear and/or resentment that I would much rather do without. There's enough hatred and bitterness and sadness and suffering going on in the world, shit that ordinary people have the luxury of never, ever seeing, and I don't particularly feel keen on contributing even more to them. I've given out enough punishments; I'm done with them. I just told Houshou that I was thankful that I didn't have a reason to hand out such punishments forced down my fucking throat.

So in the end, everything smoothed over. It was just coincidence that Houshou and I both had pretty rough days at the same time, and 'cause of our short fuses, we kinda bumped heads a little. Well, I'm just glad that I don't have to feel awkward or uncomfortable around Houshou every time I walk into the mess hall, God, that would've sucked.

Anyways, to end this entry, I looked over the PDF that contained the roster of current ship girls who've already been constructed. I've sought out the ones mentioned by Fubuki and Kirishima, obviously, but I'm looking at some of the submarines and maybe an extra battleship and standard carrier - maybe even a light carrier to augment my fleet. Who knows, none of my requests are gonna be finalized anyway. But it's something to look forward to, at least.


	23. January 25th, 2014

Saturday, January 25th, 2014.

The weekend. Oh fucking boy.

I'm gonna go off on a bit of a tangent here, so bear with me, but I personally never understood the hype behind weekends. Back in America, all my co-workers and men would be pumped up for the weekends. Even in school, we had this whole thing, a meme, you could even say, where whenever it was Friday, my classmates would all chant "TGIF!" which stood for "Thank God it's Friday!" It continued even into my time at Hargrave, my military college that I graduated from, and into my career as both an Army officer and a Navy officer. My men and other soldiers would always look forward to the weekends so that they could have barbeques, drink themselves silly drunk, socialize, and just act like normal human beings having a good time. For that, I can understand. War is stressful - people need an outlet to let loose so that they don't drive themselves nuts from the burdens that they have to carry. But as much as I understand the logic behind the hype for the weekends, I personally never managed to bring myself to enjoy them as much as other people have. Yeah, sure, weekends mean generally less work (not always applicable, though), chill time, and at least some amount of respite from the dizzying burdens of real life, but even still, I don't really know. Is it because I don't really get the whole meaning of socializing? 'Cause I think I've said this before, I don't have a lot of friends, nor am I interested in making a lot of friends - I'm just not that kind of gregarious human being. Or is it because I've just been jaded too much in my work that weekends just feel like just another day at the office or on the battlefield? Eh, I don't know. Things like these - just better not to dwell on for too long. It's good to gloss over 'em, make sure that you know exactly where you stand and you're not getting sidetracked or something, but it's not healthy if you keep thinking about it to the point where you _really _don't know anything anymore. It's like what they say in Saya no Uta, too much oxygen and it poisons your brain.

Well, that being said, paperwork was rather light today, being Saturday and all. I debated whether I wanna treat weekends like they do in school, just have no missions and instead focus on training and drilling. But because we did skip a mission earlier this week, I still sent some of the girls on a sortie. But we'll talk about that a little later.

Good news: Kirishima and Murakumo were released from the infirmary today. They're still in no condition to sortie, but Akashi told me that after this weekend that they should take to rest, they should be good to go. Kirishima apologized for not being in battle-ready condition just yet, but I told her not to sweat it. Sending them out to fight when they're in a weakened state is never a viable military tactic to begin with.

The only time you ever do that as an officer is when you know the war's already lost. They don't teach you that in military school - you have to learn it yourself. The hard way.

Meanwhile, Murakumo's still all like, yeah, whatever. Figures, at least Murakumo's back to her old usual self.

Shipments of supplies arrived, and in the middle of the morning, Ooyodo came in and delivered a small cardboard box for me. At first I was confused when I saw it, because I didn't immediately remember me ordering anything personally, but as soon as I saw the packing peanuts, I knew what it was. So I got up and went to the destroyers' dorm and put the new laptop on Fubuki's desk and went back to my office. Ooyodo asked me what that was all about, so I explained the situation to her, how I bought a laptop for Fubuki and the other destroyers to use to watch anime and do other stuff. Ooyodo didn't really react positively to that. She warned me that by doing so, I'd be setting myself up to drop even more money on the other destroyers who'd inevitably be jealous and also want laptops of their own. I told Ooyodo real simply that if it came down to that, I'd talk to the girls myself, and that what I did with my own money was my own business.

After getting the morning paperwork done, I had some time before lunch, so I continued work on the comprehensive program report. It's actually going a lot more smoothly than I thought. Like I said, I'll include a copy of the report in the journal here...question is, though, how. Maybe a Word document and save it on a small flash drive and stick it in here? Nah, I don't like that, to be honest. I'll just stick some papers in here - it's no big deal.

Ooyodo gave me the shipment invoice for today's supplies that got flown in before lunch, and the construction supplies for the new dockyards arrived. There was a handwritten note on the backside of the invoice, telling me that HQ would send some guys over to handle the plumbing and everything, so we just need to do the cosmetic stuff. Fine by me - I was wondering how the fuck we'd even pull off building a bathhouse in the first place, because I sure don't have any advanced temp or building experience or knowledge, and I'd bet none of the girls do either.

So here's the embarrassing part for today. During lunch, while we were eating, Fubuki burst into the mess hall by slamming the doors open, and everyone looked over like what the absolute fuck is wrong with you. She dashed over to me, while I'm eating lunch with Samidare and Murakumo, and here's the thing: the mess hall is actually really, really big, so it took her a few moments to actually run over to our table. She slammed her hands down on our table right next to me and screamed,

_**"YOU ACTUALLY BOUGHT ME A COMPUTER!?"**_

I swear to God her yell made my naval cap fall off.

So I told her, uh, yeah, I did, I told you about it, remember? But Fubuki didn't believe me. Apparently there was something in the back of her head that convinced her that I wouldn't actually buy her a brand new spanking laptop to watch anime on, no fucking way. So when she had gone to her dorm right before lunch and opened the box that I had left on her desk, she flipped the fuck out.

I've never seen a girl like Fubuki, with her gentle personality and reserved manners, freak out so wildly like that in my life. Like, holy shit.

So that immediately caused a shitstorm in the mess hall. The rowdier ship girls all rose up and hurried over to me, demanding me why I was showing favoritism to Fubuki and buying her a new laptop for apparently no reason. It was like Ooyodo had predicted - well, not _exactly, _per se, but they were definitely upset with the fact that I got something for Fubuki and not for everyone. So I had to try 'n explain my way out of getting absolutely hated, saying that the laptop wasn't necessarily completely Fubuki's to own, but that I bought it with the intention of letting Fubuki have it to share with the other destroyers. But that made Kitakami complain about the light cruisers, since the destroyers have a complete dormitory to themselves due to the sheer amount of them, while the light cruisers and heavy cruisers had to share a dorm. They wouldn't just be able to walk over to the destroyers' dorm just to go watch anime with them, even though those two dorms are basically right next to each other.

Soooooooooooo now I have to get the exact same one for the light cruisers to share with the heavy cruisers, and one for the capital ships to share amongst themselves. Goddamn it. I immediately regret my purchase.

No, actually, I don't _regret _it. I certainly should've seen this coming, but even still, I think it's worth it. These girls don't really have many options for entertaining themselves here at base - it's pretty bare, to be honest, and I don't really know how they pass their free time to begin with. Maybe cards, board games - I saw Kitakami and Ooi playing some ratslap (I think they were playing something like ratslap, it was some kind of two-player card game), but not really anything electronic-based. And seeing that this base has god-tier Internet (it kinda has to, it's a military base for God's sake), having a lot of computers hooked up to it wouldn't be a big deal. Memories of old-school LAN parties come to mind back from late high school.

After sending some of the girls on a sortie (just another relatively safe recon mission), I called Mamiya, Irako, and Houshou together again (I wasn't planning on sending Houshou out on sortie today anyway), and we spent the entire afternoon until the girls came back from sortie discussing where we'd put the dockyards. Eventually we decided on sticking it close by the dorms so that the girls could dock, repair, and go back to their dorms easily. In fact, that way, it's basically right in between the mess hall and the dorms, so it's super convenient for everyone. The only inconvenient thing that I can think of with our layout for the dockyards is that it's a bit far from Shinsengumi, so if the girls get out of the bath and wanna head over for a late night snack or drink, it might not be the best feeling in the world knowing that you'd have to walk a bit further to get there. But hey, at that point it's my duty as a military officer to tell the girls "Just deal with it". I mean, I'm paid to say that after all.

The girls came back with no injury again, so that was great. After they demobilized, I called everyone to my office again and told them that I was going to send the naval personnel request to HQ, and because I didn't really know who to request, I was open to suggestions from everyone else. Not surprisingly, everyone requested ship girls from their own classes. Ooi, naturally, didn't want anyone to be requested, for fear someone might steal away her precious Kitakami. Seriously, she needs to get over that. Since HQ didn't specify any limit to the amount of ship girls I could request, I just listed them all, and they were:

(DD) Suzukaze  
>(DD) Ushio<br>(DD) Oboro  
>(DD) Akebono<br>(DD) Ikazuchi  
>(DD) Akatsuki<br>(DD) Hibiki  
>(SS) I-19<br>(SS) I-8  
>(SS) I-158<br>(SS) I-401  
>(CA) Atago<br>(BB-X) Kongou  
>(BB-X) Haruna<br>(BB-X) Hiei  
>(CVN) Hiryuu<p>

Those were the ones who were requested directly by the ship girls themselves. To this I added a few of my own:

(DD) Shiratsuyu  
>(DD) Shigure<br>(DD) Murasame  
>(DD) Yuudachi<br>(CL) Yahagi  
>(CL) Kiso<br>(CA) Ashigara  
>(CA) Maya<br>(CA) Choukai  
>(BB) Yamato<br>(BB) Musashi  
>(CVL) Hiyou<br>(CVL) Jun'you  
>(CVN) Shoukaku<br>(CVN) Zuikaku

Obviously this's a lot to request, but there wasn't a cap to how many ship girls I could request, so fuck it. I sent the email with this request list over to HQ with that exact disclaimer. It's pretty clear they're not going to send even a fifth of how many are there, because if they sent _every single one _who's requested here, that would literally triple or even quadruple our current roster. But hey, it's something to look forward to - we'll see what HQ says tomorrow morning.

Nothing else eventful happened the rest of the day after that. After dinner, Fubuki invited me to watch Clannad together, and even though I've already watched Clannad and Clannad Afterstory (hell, I even read through one of the routes of the visual novel, I liked it so much), I didn't mind watching it again. Everyone crowded into Shinsengumi and we watched through half of the first season of Clannad while eating Hakata ramen and chugging Ramune and sweet blueberry tea. The laptop screen wasn't too big - it only had a thirteen or fourteen inch screen, but that didn't stop us from watching.

So now I'm thinking about installing a projector somewhere in Houshou's izakaya so that the next time we do that, we have a projector that'll display the laptop screen for everyone to see better. That probably means an extra hundred or two hundred dollars...but oh well. I don't really spend the money that I earn from work all that much anyway - I'm one of those hoarders who just sticks all his paychecks right in the bank after he gets it and sits on all that saved money. At least this whole thing gives me an excuse to dig through some of that cash.

I've been hanging out a lot with Batsubyou lately. Even though I'm still kind of pissed at him for knocking over that glass of tea the other day, I still like scratching his head, and he still likes sneaking into my room. I'll have to take him back to Error though before I go to sleep, and I'm not looking forward to Error potentially scratching my sleeve with her sharp fingernails. She really needs to cut them.


	24. January 26th, 2014

Sunday, January 26th, 2014.

I know I mentioned how I was debating whether to make weekends as break times during the week, when the girls don't have to do any drilling or training, and with Sundays by now, it's basically halfway there. We don't bother doing jack shit during the weekends anymore.

Well, except for me, I still have to work. Kinda.

Damn paperwork.

Oh well, it's not like I have to deal with the same amount of paperwork as I do on any other day of the week. I can get Sunday's paperwork stuff over with in about an hour if I'm not distracted by anything. So while most of the other girls slept in because they can, I sat myself at my office and pumped an EDM playlist into my stereo mounted on my office walls as I worked. It's honestly been a really long time since I last worked like that, having music playing while working. Normally I'd just throw myself into my work and not give a shit about anything else, but it's refreshing to work with a bit of a groove going on. That, and I hadn't listened to that particular playlist in a long time, so it made me feel slightly nostalgic. Not by much, though.

It was a really nice day for late January this morning. The sun's up, it's a bit chilly but a lot warmer than it's been this past few weeks, and we had a sea breeze rolling through, so I opened up the window to let some of it in. It felt real good, feeling that seabreeze roll right in. I'm the kind of guy who would love napping with the sun up and a bit of breeze passing by, so eventually, when I neared the end of going through my paperwork, I started feeling real drowsy, so I powered through the rest of the papers and laid down on the couch nearby once I was done to nap a bit.

When I woke up, the first thing I remember thinking was how long it's been since I last enjoyed sleeping so much. The seabreeze was still rolling in, the sunlight pouring through my window, the scent of sea salt, and the warmth from the sunlight mixed with the coolness of January soaking into my clothes and skin. And to make everything even more perfect, my EDM playlist was playing some Spring Fever by Alpha Drop, so the music perfectly matched the atmosphere. I'm not one to be mushy, but it was wonderful. Who the hell needs drugs when you can just have something like this.

What I also woke up to was Batsubyou sitting on my left arm, also napping, and a big blue gradient mat of hair tossed about over my stomach. Samidare was sleeping right next to me on the couch too.

Like, how's a guy like me supposed to react to that? Am I supposed to scold her for behaving in a disorderly manner, or just let it go? Do I pull out my hard-ass military officer side or just be chill with it?

Needless to say, at that point, I couldn't move around. If I did, I'd either wake up Batsubyou or Samidare, or I'd wake up the cat, who then in turn might wake up Samidare and make the situation all awkward. So I just stayed there, not sure what to do and just praying that no one else walked into my office and see us and make this huge misunderstanding or something.

But man, I'll be honest - I can't get Samidare out of my mind now.

While I was just laying there like an idiot, I got a real thorough look at Samidare. What she looked like...even what she _smelled_ like. I know I'm sounding like a complete freak, but when you have a girl like Samidare lying down next to you, _sleeping _next to you on the same couch, if you're a normal guy, you'll check her out. And that's what I did. Can't blame me, and even if you do, it's not like I did anything to her.

But _still_.

Her beautifully toned gradient hair that looks like something taken straight out of a painting - just looking at it, with its shades of blue that seemed to pulse about in the sunlight, was calming and even felt like it was cooling me down.

Her small, finely chiseled nose - I don't know why I need to make such a big fuss over her nose, but it just...it just fits her face. It's so weird.

Her lips, while not as big and red as I'm used to (I blame makeup-lathering American schoolgirls for that), were still no less perfect. No wrinkles, no blemishes, just a glossy surface of soft skin.

Speaking of skin, her skin - I dared to place the back of my hand against her shoulder, where her skin's exposed from her armglove and uniform. It's skin-meltingly soft. Softer than any plushie or downy blanket I've felt. Like, I was asking myself, how is it possible for someone to have skin like this, skin that if you touch it, you can't let go because you just wanna keep touching it because touching it feels so good. It wasn't easy actually getting around to feeling her skin, 'cause I had to use my right arm that Samidare was sleeping on, but my desire to find out what her skin felt like drove me to ease my arm out to do it. It just looked too good to be true. But it was.

And her smell. This's gonna sound even weirder, but...her hair smells like peaches. Peachy hair, but it's blue. Blue peaches? It fucked with my mind a little. Maybe peach-scented shampoo and conditioner? But how thorough does she shower to get_ all _of her hair to smell like that? The smell of her hair and skin was making my mind go numb.

If I haven't mentioned it already by now, it's now that I fully realize, holy fucking crap, Samidare is cute as fuck.

Now, the reason why I've dwelled on this for so long is to point out the fact that I've never been a really sociable guy in my life. Growing up, I didn't care to meet other people. Yeah, I had my fair share of friends, and those friends knew other friends, and we'd all hang out somewhere at a mall or go to parties together (parties for me was a rare occasion, though). I just didn't really care to get hooked up with other girls or try my luck at dating them or whatever - I couldn't be bothered at the time. Sure, yeah, I ran into a couple girls whom I found attractive or slightly to my tastes, but in the end I'd remind myself that those girls probably weren't too interested in having a permanent boyfriend or whatever.

Which leads me to say that believe it or not, I'm actually more of a romantic guy than you'd think. I don't show it, sure, but I'd prefer meeting a girl who'd be interested in me, wanna spend time with me, and if things work out, then maybe get engaged, be married, all that stuff. I've seen the shit that happens when high school dating doesn't really work out, and that's how rumors, gossips, and drama queens are born. I didn't want to be involved in that whole crap. That doesn't mean that I didn't subconsciously create a rough archetype of the girl I'd wanna marry.

(In case you're interested, I'd like a girl who's a bit shorter than me, long hair - preferably blonde, but I don't mind brunettes - quiet but has one of those beautiful one-hitter-quitter smiles that you'll never forget. Oh, and she also needs to approve of or enjoy anime and video games, too. In other words, my chances are basically next to zero. Doesn't stop me from hoping that one day, maybe I'll meet a girl like that.)

So in case you want the TL;DR, I don't have a lot of experience dealing with girls. It's not that I'm gynophobic, but it's just that I treat girls just the same as I treat guys, and obviously that can be a bit of a problem because sometimes I'll end up in situations where I should've acted differently but didn't and got screwed 'cause of it. That also goes for encounters like this, when Samidare's sleeping right damn next to me, and I'm just frozen there thinking how I'm going to escape the situation from worsening. And then the next thing you know I'm just checking her out like I'm some forty year old virgin perv. That's slightly depressing if I put it that way.

I guess the fact that the first thing I thought after I realized how cute Samidare is was "Damn, I'm one lucky motherfucker to have a hot chick like Samidare nap right next to me" redeems me somewhat as a decent human being. In other words, you could say that until now, I didn't realize just how attractive girls could really be. Guess I'm hitting puberty late, aren't I. cough cough

But after about ten or so minutes after I found Samidare sleeping with me, she also woke up, and while my heart nearly exploded when she woke up, I managed to keep my cool. She looked up straight into my eyes, blinked a couple times, and suddenly propelled herself off the couch after gasping really, really loudly. Like, I'm pretty sure if someone was outside my office, they would've heard the gasp. But she fell off the couch because she was so surprised, and that more or less silenced her, and she just went "Ow, ow, ow" while rubbing her arm that she fell on.

I asked Samidare what had happened, and Samidare explained that she had come into my office to deliver me some barley tea, which she had put on my desk, and found me napping on the couch. She had stayed up late with Fubuki and the other destroyers watching more anime, so she woke up only a bit later than usual and was still quite sleepy at the time she brought me tea, so she mindlessly got onto the couch with me and fell asleep there too.

During all that time while she was explaining her alibi, Samidare was red as a beet and stammering the entire way. I don't wanna sound like some weab motherfucker, but c'mon, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that hugging her was out of the question.

So we spent some time drinking the tea that she'd brought and talking for a bit. She asked me how life in Okinawa was going so far, if I was enjoying it or not, questions like that.

She also asked me about my music. She said she loved the song that was playing - Spring Fever by Alpha Drop. She'd never heard music like that before, and she said that she'd fallen in love with it and asked me if I could play any more songs like it. I showed her my music playlist, going through the ones she might like, and we had some fun enjoying the music together.

Just as we were about to leave the office for lunch, Murakumo barged into my office. She saw me sitting on the couch with Samidare and instantly accused me of sexually harassing Samidare. No hesitation whatsoever. Well...it's not entirely false, but Murakumo doesn't need to know, hehehehhe. Samidare jumped to my defense, saying that she had been the one who brought tea to me and accidentally fallen asleep with me on the couch. At the mention of this, Murakumo flipped the fuck out and ran outta my office and ran through the base, announcing to everyone that I had been sleeping with Samidare (the sexual way). So you can imagine all the girls avoiding me at lunch while poor Samidare had to go around explaining to everyone what had happened. I mean, at least the girls know that I didn't do l-l-l-l-lewd things with Samidare, but the fact that everyone knows that we napped on the same couch together - damn it, Samidare, you done fucked up. People honestly didn't need to know that, did they.

The rest of the day was spent teaching the destroyers how to bake a cake (that was what Murakumo had initially barged into my office for, to ask me to teach her how to bake a good cake), hanging out at Shinsengumi with Houshou and Souryuu while drinking some light sake, and watching Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika with Fubuki, Inazuma, and Imuya in the destroyers' dorm on Fubuki's new laptop.

Honestly, I can't hate that kind of lifestyle. A chill, laidback weekend spent on doing nothing but relaxing and getting to know the girls a bit better. You can't complain. You really can't...

...but then again, now that I think about it, I wonder what my men in the Navy would say if they knew how their commanding officer was behaving with his new Platoon. Frolicking around with little girls? I guess that's how they'd put it. I won't let it bother me, though - I'm just still being myself, just behaving a bit differently to fit the situation at hand. It's not like I _have _to be two completely different people in order to live two completely separate lifestyles.


	25. January 27th, 2014

Monday, January 27th, 2014.

You know what time it is.

Reinforcements and supplies and planning personnel for the new dockyards have arrived. Let's introduce the new ship girls.

Four new destroyers:

Wakaba (若葉), or "young leaves" or something. I think it's got something to do with the young leaves that sprout from a tree after winter, something like that, if my Japanese cultural understanding holds true, as limited it may be. She's easily the most nonchalant - while she wears a straight up suit and tie, ignoring the skirt and pantyhose, she doesn't really wear it properly, so she makes me wanna go over to her and fix up her tie that she just lazily hangs around her neck. I'm surprised it hasn't fallen off by now. At one point I actually did go over and tighten her necktie for her, and I thought she'd tell me not to, but surprisingly, she didn't mind. She's always chill, and it's like she literally doesn't give a shit about anything. She just does what she's told. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but I'll keep tabs on her.

Hatsuharu (初春), or "beginning of spring", I'm pretty sure. Where the fuck do I start with her? Physically, she's quite attractive, I won't lie, but the fact that she walks like she's got a peg up her ass and holds her fan around all the goddamn time like some English aristocrat from the motherfuckin' sixteenth century pisses me off somewhat. That, and the first time she greeted me, I didn't understand a word of what she said. Well, I'm exaggerating, I did pick up the general sense of what she was conveying, but apparently the others told me that she talks in a really archaic type of way - like medieval Japanese, or something. Like, when she talks, she addresses herself as "we", not "I". Like, what the absolute fuck? I've met some people who address themselves in third person, and while that's weird, I'm sorta used to it. But calling yourself "we"? What the hell? At the very least she's cooperative - she knows what I'm talking about, which is all that really technically matters, so long as she understands the orders that I give her. But still...I don't think I'm looking forward to working with her, because if I can't understand most of what she's talking about, not too sure if we can really get along that well...

Akebono (曙), or "daybreak". Cool name, shitty attitude. As soon as I put my hand out to shake her hand like I've done for everyone else when I've greeted them, she instantly looks me in the eye and says "Don't touch my hand, you fucking shitty Admiral". Like, whoa, okay. If that's how it's gonna be, then I mean...whatever, I guess. Sazanami seemed pretty happy to see her, and I found out later that they're ship sisters, so that's great. I don't really know what to do with her, though. She's totally uncooperative, she hates my guts for no apparent reason that I can see, and she avoids me at all costs. Seems like she's one of _those _people...

Kiyoshimo (清霜), or "clear frost". Seriously, these names're pretty cool if you translate them to English, wonder why our ships can't be named like this. By far the easiest to work with - she's lively, she obeys orders, and she's hyper-friendly, not just to me but to everyone. To the point of annoyance, but that's a fault I can easily overlook, given the problems I have with the other new destroyers. She looks quite cute with how her long gray hair covers a small part of her face, I think it really suits her. The one thing that's kinda strange with her's that I saw her staring at Kirishima and our new battleship (I won't spoil) during dinner at the mess hall from the destroyers' table. Like, not just a listless stare where you're not really meaning to stare at someone, but the intent, almost _longing_ stare, the kind that just screams "Oh I SOOOOOOOO wanna be them". I've seen those kinds of stares and gazes back in high school, so trust me on this, I know what they are when I see 'em. I can only assume Kiyoshimo really looks up to the bigger girls, presumably mainly battleships, but I have yet to confirm.

Our new light cruisers:

Yahagi (矢矧), but it doesn't seem like it has a direct English translation. Probably like Takao, who's named after a natural landmark or something. Very professional and courteous, like Takao, except her uniform doesn't seem as professional. But I'd imagine it's easier fighting in Yahagi's uniform than it is in Takao's - but they don't seem to mind either way. Her ponytail is amazing, though. As I've mentioned in my previous entry, I dig long black hair, and while Kiyoshimo's was certainly impressive, it doesn't stand a chance next to Yahagi's. I was tempted to ask if I could run my hand down her ponytail, but I refrained because I don't wanna seem fucking creepy on day one. I have no qualms with her whatsoever. Gorgeous, obedient, and professional - now _that's _a rare combination.

Kiso (木曾), again one of those names taken from a landmark - this time, I actually know this one off the top of my head. Kiso's the name of a river somewhere...dunno where exactly, but I've heard of the Kiso River, so I'm pretty sure that's where the name comes from. Anyway - her eyepatch's pretty badass, not gonna lie, I really like it. Makes her look sharp, which is how she acts, too, so the eyepatch complements her attitude even more well. Looks like she's the aggressive-friendly type, the kind who's not afraid to give you a hearty handshake, which is what she did for me. I think we'll get along just fine.

Our new heavy cruisers:

Suzuya (鈴谷), again named after a river somewhere, I think. Oh man...I thought Wakaba was casual, she doesn't hold a fucking candle to Suzuya here. She talks in so many goddamn contractions that I actually have a hard time following what she's saying, even though I'm supposed to understand casual Japanese better. Ugh, the irony. Also, she's super clingy...I don't know why. Has she taken a liking to me? I have no idea what's going on. What the hell makes these girls behave the ways they do, anyway...she always wants me to praise her or something, and it's actually getting kind of annoying, mainly because I don't have a reason to praise her yet. I don't really know what I should do with her, to be honest...

Atago (愛宕), named after a mountain, like Takao over here. Takao was super happy when she saw Atago get off the chopper that delivered all the new girls and didn't wait to run over to her and give her a big hug. Put a smile on my face, not gonna lie. The thing is, they look _nothing _alike. Takao has short black hair and has a short skirt, but Atago has long mane-like blonde hair and a long skirt - and their demeanors are completely flipped - Takao's strict, stern, professional, and Atago is casual, laid-back, and always smiling. Every time I've seen her and run into her today, there hasn't been one goddamn time that I haven't seen her not smiling. And on top of it all, normally most of the people you see who smile all the fucking time get pretty old after a while and you get tired of them smiling all the time really quickly. Well, maybe not _everyone_, but as a military man, I don't have the patience to deal with that. But it works with Atago. She's the rare kind of person who can smile all the time and get away with not seeming annoying. Very strange, but I won't complain.

Our new battleship:

Hiei (比叡), again named after a mountain somewhere. She really reminds me of a combination of Kiso's and Atago's attitudes, aggressive, tough, and casual all at once - kind of weird but it works. Kirishima was real glad to see her, no doubt, but for some reason Hiei wasn't as thrilled. She really does look the tomboy, though, which gets really confusing because I've seen her act like a normal girl would. I dunno...we haven't had the chance to talk a lot, so I don't really know everything that's going on. Hopefully we will, she seems like a nice girl, and she's our second battleship, to boot, so obviously she's gonna contribute a whole lot to our fleet's overall firepower.

Unfortunately we didn't get any additional carriers or submarines, which would've been nice, because torpedo volleys and long-range aerial bombardments and enemy fleet detection that the subs and carriers can provide are pretty damn essential. I'm going to have to model future mission profiles around my current fleet's strengths and hope that the enemy fleets don't exploit what weaknesses they have.

Today I didn't give out a mission, but instead stocked on lots and lots of training and drilling in order to familiarize our new recruits to the rest of the fleet. Suzuya was definitely bummed out that she'd have to train immediately right after arriving, but it's gotta be done so that we don't get any more Samidares or Kirishimas or Murakumos. And I'll be damned if anyone ends up at the bottom of the sea due to lack of training.

While they were off doing that, as I mentioned before, a few contractors and planners had come to help with the initial construction of the new dockyards. Houshou, Mamiya, Irako, and I walked them through what we had planned out, and the contractors and planners took it from there, which was nice of 'em. Took them a couple hours, but they got the dockyard construction started and left us with ample building supplies to finish the project from there. Honestly, can't complain. It went a lot better than I'd expected. Too often I'd request a service like this back in America in the Navy or the Army, and the brass would send me shit to get started and expect me to finish the job on my own. You can imagine how I developed a knack of being creative to get my job done - so the fact that I didn't have to pull my brain outta my ears to think outside the box in order to figure out how to build a goddamn bathhouse is really nice. With everyone working on this for a couple hours at night, we should have this done before the weekend.

So that took up a lot of the day - inducting the new girls into the Okinawa fleet, getting the morning paperwork done and confirming to HQ that we had received the new reinforcements (they sent an email this morning saying that I shouldn't expect more reinforcements for quite some time, which is kind of a bummer, but we certainly have gotten a lot more ship girls in a short amount of time), discussing construction plans with the contractors and planners, and getting more of my comprehensive report done. In fact, I can finish it tomorrow, so I'll stick it in front of the next entry here.

Shouhou came in earlier tonight into the office as I was working on the report, still wearing her combat-ready uniform, with some sweet rice crackers and hot raspberry tea. Ever since she'd joined the fleet, we hadn't really talked a whole lot. I'd just notice her sometimes in the halls or outside training, but we just never...got to know each other, for a lack of a better phrase, and for no particular reason either. Just, it seems we both had our own agendas and they didn't line up until now. So I asked her how it's been going for her, and she said it's been alright. She'd made good friends with Souryuu, the standard carrier, which makes sense since they're both carriers, more or less.

Well, that was what she said at first. As we talked a bit more, eventually she confessed that the reason why we'd never really talked like this before wasn't accidental or coincidental; it was because she had been avoiding me. So I asked her, like, why were you avoiding me? And she said that because she had been told that I would be American before she was transferred here, she was very uncomfortable with that. Not scared, not frightened, not angry, just...uncomfortable. I asked if that was because of the whole World War II thing, and she didn't say anything, so I'm assuming I hi the nail on the head with that one.

So instead, to change the topic, I asked her why she'd come to give me some snacks and tea if she was avoiding me - that is, if she still is. She said that over the past week or so that she'd been here, she'd been talking with the other ship girls, and they've apparently told her that there wasn't anything to be afraid of in regards to me. With the exception of Murakumo and the others that don't really hold me in high regard, the other girls told me that I wasn't at all like what they thought would turn out to be. I was American, yeah, but they had told Shouhou that I wasn't scary and I shouldn't be someone to avoid like she had been doing. So she took this excuse to deliver me some snacks and tea to try to have a little talk going. Something like that.

I did ask Shouhou why she chose to fight in a uniform like that - and perhaps more especially, it's frickin' January and it still gets pretty freezing outside, even inside the base. Shouhou said that she didn't mind, that ship girls don't really feel temperature changes as much as regular humans do. It's not like the ship girls can die of cold - well, if it gets _too _cold, it gets hard for them to move around in the first place, but that's like, we're talking about negative forty or something degrees Celsius before they have to start worrying about that. Overheating, more of a bigger problem, but even then.

I'm just gonna go straight to sleep after finishing this entry. Surprising, 'cause usually I'd finish the day with a couple anime episodes or playing through a bit of games on my Steam library - but today's been busy. Not frustrating, not overly exhausting, but just busy - just one of those days where you wanna go straight to sleep.

But hopefully with this fleet, we won't have to worry about taking casualties as bad as we've had before. Just hopefully, knock on wood.


End file.
